Micah Tillman

The First Story: Part I

Jun 16th, 2010 by Micah Tillman

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

THE FIRST STORY: Introduction

We can no longer read our most controversial Story. The ability was lost when our Storytellers stopped telling it. They began to recite other Tales under the same name.

The Other Tales contradicted each other. They gathered in groups and waged war. Worst of all, some pointed to the Story and called it a lie.

“Which Tale will win?” was all we could think. Or is there a way all Tales could come to peace? The Story was buried under conflict and possibility.

In the storm’s midst we began to feel something missing. We saw the peoples around us and their Stories. We heard of ancestors who had Stories.

We wanted our own Stories.

But “story” meant “fiction,” and “Myth” meant “falsehood.” We knew this because we had learned to know it. The Other Tales told us so.

Yet there was a deeper knowing. We felt it when we saw the Stories we could not call our own. And we grew angry at those who had taken ours.

There was no beauty in the battle amongst the Other Tales. The Storytellers had disgraced their own art. We would have to revive it for them.

But could we? Can we forget the Tales and find the Story? Or is it too late?

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien prepared the way for what we are about to do. Between them they have returned a sense of hope to those who yearn for Myth while being uncomfortable with belief. Through their writings we have come to learn the power and role of Myth. They made stories respectable again.

In his An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis wrote that there are different kinds of readers. The best are those who can involve themselves so thoroughly in piece of literature that they seem to surrender to the Storyteller. To truly read you must allow the Author to do something to you, to take you on a journey.

What makes a story true literature, and not something less, is the worthiness of the work for such surrender. We are enriched by the guidance of some Writers, impoverished by others. But to find out which is which we must either seek out witnesses or risk it ourselves.

We have become very much unwilling to “risk it” when it comes to the Story in this book. There is simply too much at stake in the war of Tales to lay down arms for a moment and return to the Original. We are afraid we will betray our side.

But what if we are impoverished by turning to Other Tales? What if the Story was worth our surrender? What if it could be the Myth we’ve been missing?

If there is one thing that separates a Myth from other kinds of stories, it is the use to which a Myth is put. A Myth is a story we use to reveal the structure and meaning of our lives. Myths are the stories we use to fill out such sentences as: “I feel like [Character] must have felt when [Event] happened,” or, “This is like that time when [Character] [performed some act],” or, “Then I realized they were trying to pull a [Character/Event] on me.”

A Myth is a story we treat like a simile, or even metaphor, for our lives. They can, therefore, be either true or false, fact or fiction. Whether a Story “actually happened” often makes no difference to whether you can use it to interpret your own life-story. Non-Fiction can fill the Myth role just as well as Fiction. We compare our situations not just to the Siege of Troy but to Crossing the Rubicon and the Battle of Normandy.

A certain world leader recently called the Holocaust a “Myth.” If he understood that Myths can be true, and are often better at fulfilling their function when true, then he might be credited with a philosophical insight. The Holocaust is emblematic of the Jewish experience, and therefore provides a Story whereby the world’s Jews can put the structures of their own lives into relief. The difference between the Holocaust and many other Myths is that it is not only an important story, but it actually happened.

Some have called the Story in this book a Myth. But they always mean the word like that world leader meant it. A Myth, they say, is a Story people used to believe; “but we know better now.” We know better now because we have better Storytellers, they say.

Though we yearn for Myth, we are not lacking in pretenders. We still use Tales to give structure to our world. Our Storytellers are Scientists, and our Stories are “experimental proofs,” “double-blind trials,” “peer reviewed articles,” and “scholarly consensus.” We know the Story of what happens to us when we digest food, how lights turn on and off, and what neurons do. We were taught these Stories in Monday (through Friday) School.

These are our Myths; these are the Stories we use to help ourselves understand what is going on. Whether they are true does not change the function they serve. And whether they are Stories does not change their truth-value. To call Science a “Myth” is not to denigrate it. It is to recognize its role.

The good reader, following Lewis, will ask, “Which of the Stories available to us is worth ‘reading?’” To which should we surrender for our enrichment? Which brings out the patterns in our world most vividly? Which brings life to our lives?

The answer is that we cannot know until we start to read. We have to risk it.

What makes our Story controversial is the question of how it relates to the Tales we tell in its Place. But we cannot know whether the Story fits or does not fit those Other Tales until we know what it says. And we cannot know what it says until we purposefully put the Other Tales out of play.

This is nearly impossible for us to do, because we constantly feel driven to ask, “Is this Story true?” But if we examine this question closely enough we will find that what we mean, in practice, is, “Does this Story fit with the stories I already accept?” (This is what William James calls the “pragmatic” definition of truth.) But we cannot know whether this Story fits the others until we discover what it actually says.

So as we dare to risk the Story once more, we will ask one question and one alone: What is the Story telling us? We will not live in the struggle between stories but within the Story itself. It was written for a purpose; its author has something to say. Once we have listened we can return to fray.

But for the moment let’s just listen.

^{[ Click Here to comment on the Intro ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I

To hear a story properly is to participate in it. We haven’t heard it until we’ve lived it through the hearing. The problem is that, after a few listens, every story becomes difficult to relive — just like it’s hard to really mean what you say when you’re reciting memorized lines. Acting something is different than living it.

To be able to relive the Story, to be able to hear it properly, we listen to it with children. We tell it to those who have never heard it. We listen to it with them, and thereby share their experience of the Story. It becomes new to us by being new to them.

The Creation Story is no longer new to us. We already decided long ago who wrote it and when, why it was written and for whom. To hear it again we must join the tradition of retelling the old stories anew. But how can we do this when we are sitting alone with a copy of these pages? There is no one to tell the Story to who would find it new.

To hear the Creation Story, then, we must tell ourselves a new story.

* * *

Let us tell ourselves a story about ourselves. Let us imagine that we have discovered a very old book, the kind of old book whose fragility makes us afraid to open it. On its cover we can make out the remains of what must have once been an intricate illustration.

The illustration appears to be an attempt to represent different times and different areas all within one frame. We see both trees and sea, both sun and moon, both animals and people. The animals look slightly familiar, but also strange. The two humans we can see stand side by side, arm in arm. One faces the land and gestures to the animals who have turned to listen, while the other reaches toward the sea and its rapt inhabitants.

We wonder what kind of situation the artist has caught these subjects in. Is this a struggle between two lovers, one of whom is drawn to adventures on the high seas while the other prefers the mystery of the woods? But their arms are linked as if they are partners, and the artist has not introduced strain into their poses.

And why are the animals so interested in the two? They are portrayed in movement toward the humans, and specifically toward the extended hands. Do they expect to be fed? But their mouths closed. It is their eyes that are open.

* * *

Like the division between land and sea, the picture’s sky is split in two. One half is dark, containing stars and a full moon. The other is a light gray (the picture has nothing but shades of gray) with the sun between two birds. Unlike the other lines in the illustration, the one dividing the sky is straight, though leaning slightly to the right. Is the artist saying the events portrayed happen both day and night? Or simply “continually”? Passage of time must be implied, as it is impossible for the sky to be divided so.

The illustrator is clearly trying to tell us something, but we cannot decipher what. Is it a story? Perhaps it is a metaphor for the human condition. Perhaps the answer lies inside the book itself.

* * *

Being as careful as we can, we open the cover and find a blank first page. The paper is thick and darkened around the edges, so we cannot see through to what we expect will be the title. Turning the page our expectations are fulfilled. In what we are sure was grand lettering at the time, we find the words, “The First Story” printed.

It seems rather audacious, we muse, to claim you are relaying the first story ever told. Haven’t people always told stories? Isn’t that what we do every day when we talk to each other?

Though we’d never thought of it before, we realize that it makes the most sense to say the first story was told by one of our hunter-gatherer ancestors round some prehistoric campfire. “This is how the day’s hunting and gathering went,” we can almost hear them grunt. But who would bother retelling such a story? That would be like turning a day at the office into a novel.

No, what would be more interesting, we decide, would be a story about those first storytellers. A story about how something started is always better than a story about the middle of something.

* * *

Then it hits us. Perhaps the title doesn’t mean the Story in this book was the first story ever told, but that it is the first in a series of stories. Perhaps it is a story about some beginning, and there are others that follow. Maybe this is Part I of some ancient trilogy.

A trilogy about naked people (I forgot to mention that the people on the cover were naked) who do things together with land and sea creatures all day and night seems bizarre enough to be worthy of at least a couple Tales. What would drive them to act as they do? What are they trying to accomplish? Do they succeed? We hope that this “First Story” will start us at the beginning and won’t send us looking for some “prequel.”

We turn the page and find no publication information. There is no copyright date, Library of Congress designations, etc. We realize that the title page hadn’t even mentioned the Author. So we have a “First Story” written by no one. Perhaps the Author will identify himself (or, even more interestingly, herself) once the Story has gotten under way.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I's Intro ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.One

The text begins with the heading, “Chapter 1.” Below that is a large “I,” followed by:

n the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.

Given the cover illustration, we had been expecting something else. We’re not sure what, but a story about someone named “God” wasn’t it. Maybe the people on the cover were not humans, but deities?

An unexpected God-reference aside, the fact that we begin “in the beginning” seems utterly appropriate.

But why not at the beginning? Can you even be “in” a beginning? To be in something, you have to be surrounded by it—so this beginning must be extended. An instant cannot envelop.

Yet, no matter how extended this beginning is, you only call something “the beginning” from outside—especially from after. That means this Story is later; the beginning is over. The God-character belongs to a time gone by.

Perhaps?

“How a hero met his end.” Maybe this story is a tragedy and the God-character perishes in his quest to find the Goddess-character (the cover showed a male–female pair, after all). They’d link arms, uniting the woods and sea, the fish and. . . .

But we get ahead of ourselves. The text doesn’t say that the God-character was in the beginning; it’s his creating that was in the beginning. It’s as if the Author sees the God-character as an author too.

(Every author does many things “in the beginning” of the stories she writes, but the author is never “in” those beginnings. An author acts in her stories, but is never in them herself.)

So, in this Story there’s a character named “God” who’s creating things. Creating the Heaven and the Earth. That’s got the Universe about covered. If you create the two halves, you create the whole. Right?

But if the Author meant “the Universe,” then the God-character comes out of nowhere.

Authors are always in the real world before making their “story worlds,” but our author has the God-character create the real world. In the Author’s mind, this character was already there in the beginning of all theres. And beyond all “theres,” there’s nowhere.

But then we are startled.^*

What’s beginning? What’s this “beginning” that envelops the God-character’s creating?

The text doesn’t say, “In the beginning of the Universe God created the Universe.” It just says, “In the beginning.”

And every beginning is the beginning of something.

So, we examine the options. The Author has mentioned only two things that could begin: the Universe, and the God-character. Do either make sense?

If the beginning is of the Universe, then redundancy follows. “In the beginning [of the Universe], God created the Universe.” You don’t say! Could anyone create anything after it began? If it’s already there, it doesn’t need creating.

So, maybe this is the first thing the God-character ever did. That is, maybe this is like a biography of the God-character, and we have here a description of his beginning.

Except we don’t.

Biographies start by talking about the parents and birthplace of the biographee, about the provenance of the protagonist. The only beginning this sentence actually describes, however, is the beginning of the Universe. The Story—so far—sounds more like a biography of the Universe than a biography of the God-character.

And if this is a biography of the Universe, it would be a little disingenuous to describe its beginning in terms of another, undescribed beginning. “In the beginning of God, God created the Universe.” That would be like. . . .

Well, imagine that we walk up to the Author, and ask, “Whence comes the Universe in your story?”

“Why, it comes from the God-character in my story, of course, who comes from. . . .” The Author’s voice trails off.

“From where?” we ask.

“I answered your question. I told you where the Universe came from.”

“No you didn’t!” we’d insist. “You told us it came from something, and—in the same breath!—that that something came from something else; but you’re not telling us what that ‘something else’ is.”

But the Author just smirks.

And this is what we get for thinking too much. We’ve talked ourselves into a corner. If the beginning is of the Universe, then the Author is needlessly redundant. And if the beginning is of the God-character, then the Author is just . . . well, annoying. Perhaps even rude.

We’re clearly not getting this author-reader relationship off on the right foot. “Hey Author, tell us a story,” we asked as we turned the page. And in response to the first line of the Story, we’re now saying, “Hey Author, you’re either redundant or rude.” Surely we can be more charitable than that.

But there is no third option! The Author has only mentioned the character named “God,” and the two halves of the Universe. What else is there, in this first sentence, that could have a beginning?

Then it hits us.

The Story itself. There are three things: the God-character, the two halves of the Universe, and the Story itself. And we’re in the beginning of the Story.

How many tales have we heard, after all, that begin with, “Our story begins with . . .”?

^{[ Click here to comment on Part 1.One ]}

______________________________________________________________

^{*We’re philosophers, and philosophers startle easily. (Hey, I write the story, I make the rules.)}

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:1, KJV ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Two

And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

We smile to ourselves. Why would the Author say God created the Heaven and the Earth if all the character managed to do was make the Earth shapeless and empty? That doesn’t seem to be an accomplishment worthy of a god.

And if the Earth was “without form, and void,” what was the Heaven like?

We think for a moment, and then realize: If the Earth had no shape, and contained nothing, it would be impossible to distinguish it from the Heaven. And since a Heaven is only identifiable as Heaven in relation to some Earth, to say that the Earth was indistinguishable says plenty.

Contrary to our first impression, then, it’s not that the God-character “made the Heaven okay,” but didn’t do so well with the Earth. Rather, the God-character creates the two as one. And since the only Heaven and Earth we know today are separate, we assume the Author is going to tell us how they got that way.

But what is this about darkness and the Deep? “The Deep” usually means, “the Ocean,” and “the face of the Deep” would mean, “the Ocean’s surface.” We are puzzled. The Earth is formless and void, yet there is an ocean with a surface. Is this ocean on Earth, and if so, is our conclusion that the Earth and the Heaven are indistinguishable still tenable?

Perhaps the Earth is some liquid mass at this point with no distinct shape. Or perhaps this ocean is the Universe itself and the Universe is but one such mass. The Author has created a bizarre world indeed, and our curiosity is piqued.

But what we read next is more bizarre still:

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

God has a Spirit? And not only is there darkness on the Ocean’s surface but God’s Spirit is there too?

Maybe, like the Earth and the Heaven, Darkness and Spirit are one. There’s an unsettling thought. But the Darkness is portrayed as simply being “on,” while the Spirit is portrayed as moving. If the Author portrays them differently, she (or he?) must want us to see them as different. Right?

While we know of no languages that have one word for both “darkness” and “spirit,” there are some that have but one for “spirit” and “wind.” Some ancient philosophers even thought that the human soul was a kind of air-like gas. We stop to ponder for a minute how the line might have read with “wind” instead:

And the wind of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Now that is a familiar picture: wind ruffling the surface of a lake or puddle. And we have encountered other stories where the gods are involved in bringing storms upon the Sea.

This hypothetical reading is less shocking—more reasonable. We begin to ask, therefore, whether we are holding the work of a Translator who simply made a mistake. But why would we want to make the Story less shocking? It’s a better story to say that the “Spirit of God” was flying around over the ocean, and it leads to more interesting questions.

For instance, how can a god have a spirit? We’re used to gods being described as either physical (though supernaturally-powerful) beings or spiritual ones. But we’ve never heard of a god having a spirit, much less that spirit doing something the god isn’t. (It doesn’t say, we note, that God is moving over the ocean but that God’s Spirit is.)

Is the God-character having an out of body experience, then? Or is God’s Spirit ever in God’s body at all? Does the Author think God even has a body?

See, we tell ourselves, those are much more fun to ask.

But now we begin to wonder: what is the Spirit of God doing by moving over the ocean—or the liquid Universe—or whatever? Is it looking for something? Is it playing? Even if the word should be “wind,” we’d still ask, “Why was God sending wind over the ‘Deep’?” Is the God-character, bored with all the formlessness and emptiness, trying to make waves for the sake of variety? We cannot tell unless the Author gives us some insight into what the God-character is thinking.

Hoping to gain just that, we move on.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Two ]}

______________________________________________________________

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:2, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Three

God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Once again we find ourselves unprepared for what we’ve just read.

Suddenly the God-character speaks, and when he speaks, things happen. The Author never told us how God created the Heaven and the Earth, but now we are told God creates Light simply by commanding that it be.

Dare we even call this “creation?” It’s not as if something has been formed out of what was previously unformed. This, after all, is usually what we mean by “create.” (A car, for instance, is “created” by bringing its various parts into the proper form by putting them together in the proper way. A statue is “created” by introducing a new form into the material with which the sculptor works.) But the God-character forms nothing here. God simply commands that Light be, and Light is.

It was clearly a command; but to whom is the God-character giving this command? Perhaps to the Spirit-character? But then the Author would have written, “and the Spirit made light.” This is not how the Author portrays things. Rather, before God spoke there was “darkness on the face of the deep,” and after God spoke there was Light. The Author clearly means us to understand that it was nothing but the God-character’s command that made things as they were.

We are intrigued, however, by the following possibility. What is a command but words, and what are words but formed exhalations of breath, and what is breath but a minor form of wind? Perhaps, that is, we should not have been surprised when the Author writes that God spoke. After all, God’s Spirit(wind?-breath?) had already been moving over the water.

And then there is the sequence: first darkness on the water, then wind, then words, then Light. Between the Darkness and the Light comes both God’s Spirit(wind?-breath?) and God’s word. The Author seems to portray God’s Spirit as going before God’s command, preparing things for the arrival of the command.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Here we cannot help but smile.

The God-character commands that light be and then notices that it is good. Is he surprised? Perhaps God had made mistakes in the past while creating and was pleased that this time things had turned out better?

But if God thinks the Light is good, why didn’t the Author say that God thought the Heaven and the Earth were as well? Perhaps Light is complete but the Heaven and the Earth aren’t. After all, the Earth was formless and void.

We realize that the first half of this sentence is making what philosophers call a “value claim.” The Light is good; i.e., it has value. God creates Light and then finds it to be valuable. Though it is not surprising that a god would enjoy what it makes, we find it interesting to compare this with our own creations. So often we make things we later find to be not only valueless, but simply bad.

Some philosophers, however, would find unacceptable the claim that Light has value. Some believe that things are only valuable if they are being used for something by humans. They think the way an entity gets value is by being a means to an end.

The Author is, therefore, taking sides in a debate by having God find something valuable that isn’t being used. For the Author, value can exist not only without humans, but without goals. Light is simply is good, rather than being good-for(-something-else).

But is the Author also taking sides in another historical debate? Plato had Socrates ask Euthyphro whether (a) things were good because the gods liked them, or (b) the gods liked things because they were good. Our Author seems to say that God discovered Light to be good rather than deciding that it was so. That is, the Author appears to believe that gods like things because they are good, not that things are good because gods like them.

The situation is more complicated here, however. We realize that in this story a god is finding something good which that god also created. In Plato’s story, by way of contrast, the gods find things good that they did not create.

So, the lines are blurred in our Story, for not only does God notice that Light is good, but God makes Light in the first place. The Light wouldn’t be good if God hadn’t made it; if God hadn’t made it, it wouldn’t be around to be good.

We could amuse ourselves for hours playing grammatical games with the situation:^* Does the fact that God made good Light mean that God made Light good? In the case of something that has value simply because of what it is (not because of what it is useful for) is there any difference between making something good and making something to be good?

It gradually becomes clear to us that the Author of the Story refuses to be aligned with either side of the Socrates-Euthyphro debate. For, while something is present in the current story that is missing in the Platonic (the god is not only judging a thing but creating the thing) something is missing in the current story that is present in the Platonic. What is missing here is the “liking” of the thing that has value.

Where Socrates had asked if the gods approved of things because those things were good, the unnamed Author of our current story simply points out that God sees that Light is good. The Story does not tell us whether or not God also had an attraction to the Light independent of seeing that it was good. For Socrates’ gods, as for us all, knowing that a thing is good and actually approving of it can be two different things. But for the God-character in this story, the question of whether seeing-something-as-good is the same as approving-of-that-thing does not even arise.

The end of the sentence (“and God divided the light from the darkness”) intrigues us further. Here the Author has God dividing the Light and the Darkness. We have found, at last, something that clearly parallels the cover illustration. In the picture the sky was divided into light and dark halves. The division there was spatial.

But we realize that the cover meant to represent a course of time, as the dark was night and the light was day. Clearly the two never divide the sky so sharply. By the division of the sky into light and dark halves, the Artist conveyed the division of time into Day and Night. If we trust the Artist, then, the Author means that God separated the Light from Darkness in time, not in space.

And our assumption is confirmed by the sentence we find next.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Three ]}

____________________________________________________

^{*We are philosophers, after all.}

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:3-4, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Four

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

The Author has God name the Light, “Day,” rather than, “Bright Half of the Universe,” and the Darkness, “Night,” rather than, “Dark Half of the Universe.” Therefore, this “division” of Light and Dark is a temporal one, not a spatial one.

But here we come upon a whole slew of points.^*

First, we notice that the Author has God not only command but name. That is, the God-character can talk without creating. Up till this point in the Story the only words God had said resulted in things being made. Now God seems to simply designate.

Gods in some stories only speak in riddles, but this one has at least two speech modes. We begin to wonder if there are any others.

Second, we have learned that the God-character is capable of several different activities. First is creating. Second is moving. Third is commanding. Fourth is seeing. Fifth is dividing. The sixth is naming. This is of interest to us because gods in certain stories can do things that those in other stories can’t; and what you think your god can do seriously affects your worldview. We might have caught our Author in a bit of self-revelation.

The third point we notice is that the Author does not tell us that God calls Darkness good. If Light is good, and Light belongs to Day, then what place do Darkness and Night have? The Author clearly thinks that Darkness and Night are around because of God.

(After all, after having created Light, the God-character could have just left it light all the time. But the Author tells us that God did not leave the Light on; rather, God divided Light and Darkness into Day and Night.)

Though the Author does not tell us that God thinks Darkness is good, we are told that Darkness exists on purpose. We are tempted to say that God made Darkness on purpose; but we resist. After all, Darkness doesn’t seem like a thing, and it’s difficult to understand how you can make something that isn’t anything.

Darkness just seems to be there without God having had any say in the matter. But in having the God-character obliterate Darkness with Light, and then reintroduce Darkness through dividing Day and Night, the Author gives God control even over the thing it seems God did not create.

With this dichotomy between Darkness and Light we begin to sense growing tension in the Story. Saying that the God-character divided Light and Darkness is a way of giving that character control over even a thing we would think uncontrollable. It is a way of defending the God-character against the accusation that it is not fully a creator since there is something in its Universe that it did not create.

By having God create Light, and then allowing Darkness to return, the Author makes it possible for God to “make” something it is impossible to make. This solves a potential philosophical critique of the God-character before it has a chance to get off the ground.

But this way of dealing with a potential “power struggle” also brings our attention back to the other unresolved tensions in the Story. The first is that the Author called the Earth “formless.” The second is that the Author called the Earth “void.” In both these cases, the Author implies that the Universe lacks something it should have.

The third tension, however, has more to do with a gap in the Story as opposed to in the World. It is the question of why Light was called good but the Heaven and the Earth weren’t. This further intensifies the first two tensions.

The story we are reading becomes clearer to us as we notice these Tensions. Every story, we know, must have some kind of problem or crisis that is to be resolved. Therefore, if this creation-story is going to be an actual story it must include some central uncertainty that is to be brought to stability.

The Author has cleverly found a way to introduce the beginnings of a plot without any kind of “bad-guy” or “negative force.” In fact, the only real “enemy” we have found are those who might accuse the God-character of not being godlike enough. That is, the “bad-guys” are outside the Story, outside the book. That is an interesting twist.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Four ]}

____________________________________________________

^{*Which is not entirely surprising, since that’s what philosophers like us do.}

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:5a, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Five

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

This Author is full of surprises.

Does the day begin with Evening? What kind of world is this? And why the sudden switch from calling the light period “Day” to calling the light and dark periods together “day”? Certainly this is how we normally speak, but at this point in the Story we still have a formless, void, and perhaps very watery Earth (with nothing much else). Nothing is normal yet.

Also, we wonder why Night is not mentioned. Evening, of course, is Night coming from Day, and Morning is Day coming from Night. As we have always experienced this, the “coming from” is a gradual process. It is a mixture of Night and Day, a breaking in of one upon the other, a fading-in or fading-out.

But which of the dark and light periods that have been mentioned so far are being referenced? At first, the Author tells us it was dark. Then God creates Light. Then God separates Light from Darkness. It would seem, then, that the First Evening happened when God separated Light from Darkness.

But if that is the case, we wonder, wouldn’t God’s creation of Light constitute the First Morning?

And if so, wouldn’t that mean that the First Morning came before the First Evening? Why, then, would the Author list the Evening before the Morning in announcing the First Day?

Perhaps the answer is that the transition from original Darkness to present Light was one of creation, while the transition from lighted Day back to darkened Night was one of separation. Perhaps, that is, the creation of Light was instantaneous, while the separation of Darkness from Light was gradual. Light is no longer made, but rather made separate. As readers we would expect these two processes to look different.

We remain confused, however, so we draw a mental picture for ourselves:

1st DARKNESS

1st LIGHT

2nd DARKNESS

2nd LIGHT

. . .

Then we ask, What did the God-character do to make each Darkness and Light happen?

//////////////////	CREATE	SEPARATE	SEPARATE	. . .
1st DARKNESS	1st LIGHT	2nd DARKNESS	2nd LIGHT	. . .

And where should the “Evening” and “Morning” go?

//////////////////	CREATE	SEPARATE	SEPARATE	. . .
1st DARKNESS	1st LIGHT	2nd DARKNESS	2nd LIGHT	. . .
///////////////////////////////		EVENING	MORNING	. . .

If this is right, and the Evening and the Morning are the First Day, we have:

//////////////////	CREATE	SEPARATE	SEPARATE	. . .
1st DARKNESS	1st LIGHT	2nd DARKNESS	2nd LIGHT	. . .
///////////////////////////////		EVENING	MORNING	. . .
///////////////////////////////		1st DAY		. . .

Now this is strange indeed, especially when we take into account the creation of the Heaven and the Earth:

CREATE H&E	/////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////	CREATE	SEPARATE	SEPARATE	. . .
1st DARKNESS	1st LIGHT	2nd DARKNESS	2nd LIGHT	. . .
///////////////////////////////		EVENING	MORNING	. . .
///////////////////////////////		1st DAY		. . .

Or perhaps we should simply draw:

CREATE H&E	CREATE L	SEPARATE L&D	SEPARATE D&L	. . .
1st DARKNESS	1st LIGHT	2nd DARKNESS	2nd LIGHT	. . .
////////////////////////////////		EVENING	MORNING	. . .
////////////////////////////////		1st DAY		. . .

Either way, this is bizarre, as it would seem that the God-character created both the Universe and Light before what the Author calls the First Day.

We could solve the problem by rethinking our previous decisions about what constitutes “evenings” and “mornings, like so:

CREATE H&E	CREATE L	SEPARATE L&D	SEPARATE D&L	. . .
1st DARKNESS	1st LIGHT	2nd DARKNESS	2nd LIGHT	. . .
EVENING	MORNING	EVENING	MORNING	. . .
1st DAY		2nd DAY		. . .

But that would mean that the Universe and Light were created on the First Day, while Light was separated from Darkness on the Second Day. The Author, however, writes as if the separation of Darkness and Light comes before the Second Day, if not before the First.

Our choices then are: (1) God creates the Heaven, the Earth, and Light before the First Day, and creates nothing on the First Day, or (2) God creates the Heaven, the Earth, and Light on the First Day, and creates nothing on the Second. As we have yet to see the Author explicitly mention the Second Day (though we know it must be coming), we decide to go with the first option. At least for the moment . . . .

In the meantime we read on.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Five ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:5b, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Six

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Firmament? There’s a word we haven’t seen in a while. We search our memories. Surely something from a poem. About birds or clouds?

Sky. That’s what it was.

So, God is talking again. But unlike last time God spoke, nothing is created.
Rather, something is to be divided (again). But this time it’s not a thing being divided from its opposite, but a thing being divided from itself. And instead of simply dividing it, God commands that it be divided.

Perhaps we were too quick, though. It’s not true that the Sky is nothing. (Though, in comparison with the Waters it’s dividing, air would seem like nothing.) Don’t we talk about “vanishing into thin air?” We speak of the “expanse of sky.” It’s the closest we ever get to actual emptiness.

But what kind of story is this? Sky is dividing the ocean? It’s a fantastic picture, but difficult to really grasp. Does the Author mean that . . .

______________________________________________________________

WATERS
______________________________________________________________

. . . becomes . . .

______________________________________________________________
____________________________WATERS___________________________

SKY
______________________________________________________________
____________________________WATERS___________________________

What a world, that would have water above the sky! How would it stay up? we wonder. Then we realize that the Earth may still be formless and void at this point in the Story. Maybe there’s no center of gravity to say what’s up and what’s down.

But what we read next uses that kind of directional language:

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

Waters “under” and “above.” So the Author finds it proper to talk about direction after all. Whereas, in the last sentence, the Firmament simply had the job of dividing Waters from Waters, now it has the job of dividing Waters above it from Waters below it. Something about this Sky establishes orientation.

This is not surprising, however. Or rather, it is pleasantly surprising. When the God-character divided Light and Darkness, this introduced temporal orientation according to “days.” Now God has separated Waters from Waters with Sky, and thereby introduces spatial directionality. It would seem we can talk about locations now.

Earlier, of course, we remember that the Spirit of God was said to be moving “upon the face of the waters.” So there were directions even then. But now we have what seems to be an enclosed space: a Sky with water above and water below. We can now talk about being “between” the Waters, of being “in” the Air; and this is fundamental to locatability. To be somewhere is to be in some space, after all.

But we’ve missed something here. Unlike the God-character’s command that Light be (which was followed immediately by its being so), God gives a command that the Sky be, and that it separate, but then God has to do both “by hand” (as it were). Why, we wonder, didn’t the Author just write:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters; . . . and it was so?

Why, in other words, would the Author essentially say the same thing twice?
We know that almost all folk poetries work by repetition. When you repeat the ending sounds of words it’s called rhyme. Repeat the beginning sounds and it’s alliteration. Perhaps this is some kind of poetry where phrases and ideas are repeated instead of phonemes.

But the repetition here is practically triple. Not only do we have the command followed by the actual creation, but we have the final, “and it was so.” The Author seems quite emphatic on this point. It’s enough to make us wonder whether there was some kind of great debate going on at the time about how Sky came to be, or why there was water both above and below it. Perhaps this Author wants to make it very clear that the situation is a consequence of Divine Intervention.

We try to imagine what such a debate would have looked like. Maybe there was a camp that claimed the Sky was made of something, perhaps even something solid. Others may have claimed that the Sky arose out of water, as we would think of water evaporating. The Author of this Story doesn’t make any claims about what the Sky is made of, but is adamant about where it comes from and what its function is.

As on the First Day (or before?) we not only have creation but separation on the Second, even though it is difficult to distinguish between the creation of the Firmament and its separating of the Waters. One thing is clear, however: things are taking on form. Not only does Time have a clear structure now (Day-Night), but Space does as well. The Author seems to be addressing the Tension introduced by the formlessness of the Earth.

But as for the Tension of “emptiness,” not much seems to be accomplished by creating a gap between waters. If the Earth is to be filled, that must come later. Likewise, the Tension of goodness is not addressed here. So far only light has been declared good, but neither the Universe as a whole nor the Sky as a part has been evaluated. It’s enough to make us wonder whether we are reading some kind of Myth from a light-worshiping sect.

But that couldn’t be right. The Light is clearly subordinate to the God-character. The Light might be good, but we’re sure that whoever wrote this story would worship the god who made the Light and turned it on and off rather than the Light itself. That is, if the Author’s religion had any connection to this story at all . . . .

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Six ]}

____________________________________________________

[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:6-7, KJV ]

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

___________________________________________________

Part I.Seven

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

The naming thing, like the dividing thing and the creating thing, seems to have established itself as a pattern now. The God-character makes something, separates something, and names something. We start to wonder whether this is going to happen every day in the Story.

We catch ourselves, however, making an assumption. We look at the phrasing again: And the evening and the morning were the second day. If we had been writing this, we would have said, “And God did all this on the Second Day.” But this author writes: “God did stuff. And the evening and morning were the Second Day.”

Are we supposed to understand that God did things and then there was another day, or that on the next day God did these things? After all, God seems to have created the Universe and Light before the First Day, not on it.

The question is, which of the following pictures is correct?

. . .	SEPARATE L&D	SEPARATE D&L	SEPARATE L&D & CREATE F TO SEPARATE Ws	SEPARATE D&L	. . .
. . .	2nd DARKNESS	2nd LIGHT	3rd DARKNESS	3rd LIGHT	. . .
. . .	EVENING	MORNING	EVENING	MORNING	. . .
. . .	1st DAY		2nd DAY		. . .

or:

…	SEPARATE L&D	SEPARATE D&L	CREATE F TO SEPARATE Ws	SEPARATE L&D	SEPARATE D&L	…
…	2nd DARKNESS	2nd LIGHT	/////////// ///////////	3rd DARKNESS	3rd LIGHT	…
…	EVENING	MORNING	///////////	EVENING	MORNING	…
…	1st DAY		///////////	2nd DAY		…

There are a number of questions raised by the second picture:

Was it light or dark during the creation of the sky? It would appear to have been light. But if that’s so, why not say the sky was created on the First Day? Is it perhaps that only the Evening and Morning constitute one Day (that is, only the time from fullest light to darkest night)?

If so, then anything done during a time of full light would not count as part of a Day. As the light is neither waxing nor waning, it would seem that time had come to a standstill. An extended “noon” would be like a limbo between Days, not a part of any Day.

After puzzling for a while we find ourselves unable to come to a decision. So we move on:

And God said, Let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

Now here is the exact structure we thought would have made more sense above.^* Instead of (a) commanding it, then (b) having to carry out the command, and finally (c) declaring that it was done, the Author simply says: God commanded it and there were the appropriate results.

But the actual content of this sentence carries even more curiosity. Not only is it a return to the “And God said ____, and there was ____” structure, but a new object has been introduced: Dry Land.

Till now all we knew about the Universe was that there was a Heaven between Waters. Evidently, however, the Waters below Heaven were covering something. That is, there is something below the Waters below the Sky.

Or maybe that is not the case at all. We designed a tentative hypothesis that the Author would have the God-character create something, divide something, and name something each Day. It is clear that we have a division here: the Earth’s surface is now divided between Ocean and Land. Surely this is the origin of the division we saw on the cover of the book, where the two figures stood at the water’s edge, beckoning in opposite directions.

This division continues the process of formation that took a large step forward when the Heaven divided the Waters above and below. That is, the Earth is no longer formless! It has not only a location (below Heaven) but a form or structure (being part Land and part Sea). Thus one of the major Tensions of the Story has been resolved.
Its companion, the emptiness of the Earth, still looms in the background, however.

As expected, then, we have a division on this Day. Do we have a Creating and a Naming as well? To answer that, we must be able to examine the Day’s doings as a whole. We scan ahead to, looking for an “evening and morning” phrase.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Seven ]}

____________________________________________________

^{*Part I.Six}^.4

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:8-9, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Eight

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Though we do not yet see an Evening or Morning, we do discover one of the other two missing pieces (creating and naming): God names both the land and the water. This we were expecting. But we are struck by the sudden recurrence of the “good” theme. Why now?

There must be something significant about this Earth/Sea thing for it to be worth calling “good.” Yet, in and of itself it doesn’t appear to be anything special.

Then we realize: This Dividing and Naming of Earth and Sea completes the process of formation, the process of remedying the formlessness with which the Earth started. Having resolved one of the two Tensions around which this story is centered would indeed seem to warrant such a value proclamation. Half the journey now must have been completed.

Having found two of the three things we expect to find each Day, we are still seeking a new creation. If we do not find anything in the upcoming sentences, we will be forced to think that that the word “appear” (in, “and let the dry land appear”) should be understood radically. That the Waters should be “gathered” and the Dry Land should “appear” could be taken in the same way as when we say, “A new book appeared on store shelves,” or “a new idea appeared in political theory,” or “a new species of dog appeared in the record.”

But before committing ourselves to this reading, we see the next sentence:

And God said, Let the Earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the Earth: and it was so.

We have found it! There is creation on this Day as well. Our triadic hypothesis is once more confirmed.

But what is going on here? We feel overwhelmed.^* This sentence teems with a vitality we have yet to encounter. We read it again slowly.

The first thing we notice is that the Author has the God-character speaking again, giving commands. But this is a command we have not seen before. Let the Earth bring forth. It is something completely new; yet not unforeseen.

We think back:

1. The Author wrote that Light came into being as a result of a command.

2. The author wrote that Heaven was created after a command but also as a direct result of the activity of God.

3. The Author wrote that the Seas and dry Earth were separated as a result of a command.

4. Now we have plants that come out of the Earth as a result of a command. The Earth is ordered to produce them. The Creation itself is commanded to create.

We said this was not unforeseen. Why? Because of the way in which Heaven is created. It comes out of the separation of the Waters from the Waters. The Waters seem to bring Heaven forth as they separate. They produce Heaven out of their midst like a crowd steps back to make a path for an important person.

If the Author would allow us this way of looking at the Creation of Heaven, then we can say that the Earth’s bringing-forth of plants is the positive parallel to the Waters’ negative production of Heaven. To make an object is the positive analogue of creating a space for that object. (The creation of a space is “negative” in a mathematical, not a moral, sense, being the opposite of the full meaning of “production.”)

But there is even more to this verse that is jarring and new. What is it the Earth is commanded to bring forth? Vegetation. For the first time the Universe contains life.

The plants that the Earth is to bring forth fall into three kinds, which mirror our own experience of that “kingdom.” There are the grasses (those plants we cannot eat), there are the herbs (those plants we can eat), and there are the fruit trees (those plants we cannot eat, but whose seed-carrying productions we can).

But even more interesting than this trichotomy is the mention of seeds and reproduction.

Not only has God commanded part of Creation (the Earth) to join in the Act of Creation, but God has commanded it to bring forth a new kind of thing: a kind of thing that can continually and repeatedly bring forth itself. The Creation is ordered to create a self-creating Creation. So many steps and so large have been taken in this one Day!^**

We pause to consider these developments. The Creator has involved the Creation in the Act of Creation. And in that Act of Creation a new Creation appears that can recreate itself. But it can only recreate itself if it once again involves the rest of Creation in creating itself. This new Creation, Plant-life, can recreate itself by way of seeds; but seeds must be returned to the Earth that brought forth their Plants. Only with the help of the Earth can Plants produce themselves again.

A marvelous new power has entered the Universe, but one that is communal, that must be exercised in cooperation.

We notice another limitation to this power: The fruit trees are said to only reproduce “after [their] kind.” Unlike the Earth they cannot bring forth something other than themselves. A fruit tree seed cannot produce grass, nor an herb seed a tree.

But isn’t this out of sync with our usual understanding of living things as somehow “higher” than non-living ones? Why should the God-character limit the Plants to repetitive reproduction when the Earth is given the power to produce something new? How is this not giving a non-living thing more power than a living being?

After considering the question for a moment the answer becomes clear. The Earth is always only a partner in production, never the cause of Creation. It first brings forth Plants in response to a divine command, and will do so in the future only in response to the gift of implanted seeds. The role assigned by the Author to the Earth is that of enabling a living being to create life. The Earth is not represented as acting of its own volition in these matters.

But we do not get the feeling that the Author is demeaning the Earth by setting up the communal power-structure in this way. After all, the dependence of the Plants upon the Earth is emphasized by placing, “Let the Earth bring forth,” at the beginning of the phrase, and, “upon the Earth,” at the end. That second reference to Earth is utterly unnecessary for any reason other than emphasis. It is only upon the Earth that Plants will be able to recreate themselves. They not only do not have the liberty to create anything else, but they do not have the liberty to do so anywhere else. They are, as it were, rooted in this system.

The sentence ends with the now-familiar “and it was so.” This mirrors the structure of the command-responses regarding Light^*** and the division of Sea from Earth.^**** This leads us to suspect that the, “Let there be/And God made/And it was so,” from the Creation of Heaven, was a mere aberration.

But calling it this does not sit well. So far we can find nothing that seems accidental for this author. How could there be an “aberration” in such a carefully crafted story?

That the Creation of Heaven section was not structurally unimportant is confirmed by the very next sentence.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Eight ]}

____________________________________________________

^{*Philosophers are easily overwhelmed.}

^{**And they are very excitable.}

^{***Part I.Three.2}

^{****Part I.Six.4}

[ Scripture quotations: Genesis 1:10-11, KJV ]

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Nine

And the Earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Despite the presence of “and it was so” at the end of the command sentence,^* the Author finds it necessary to repeat the commanded actions in full. It seems that not only did God order it to happen and it did happen, but these specific things are what happened. Thus even here we have a sibling of the triplicate structure of the Heaven creation. In that section^** it was:

“Let there be/And God made/And it was so.”

Here it is:

“Let the Earth bring forth/And it was so/And the Earth brought forth.”

We realize that the order has been altered, with the second and third elements of the structure being exchanged. But this is not the only change. The “And the Earth brought forth” element includes a phrase that the “Let the Earth bring forth” element does not. It specifies that not only are the fruit trees restricted to reproducing “after [their] kind,” but so are the herbs. With another repeat, we wonder whether the same condition would have been placed on the grasses as well.

But before we have a chance to consider that question further, we notice that the Author has returned once again to the “and God saw it was good” motif. This makes for twice in the same Day! Where only one thing had been seen to be good in relation to the First Day, and nothing in relation to the Second, two things (that we are sure will be assigned to the Third Day) have now been found good. There is something highly significant about this Day.

We had decided that the first occurrence of the “good” theme for today was to mark the completion of the formation of the Earth. Through it, the Author draws attention to the fact that the first task of creation has been completed, and the Story’s First Tension has been resolved. With that in mind, we find a way to explain this second value declaration:

We think back to the book’s cover illustration. With the division of the Earth into Dry Land and Seas, the stage is set for the scene depicted. All that is left is to populate it. It has its Night and Day, its Land and Water; but it does not have its Plants, its Animals, and its People. It is empty.

This must be why the Author finds it important to recount God’s valuation of the Plants’ coming-to-be. It is this that begins to populate the empty Earth. This is the first step toward remedying the second lack, the Second Tension in the Story: the fact that the Earth is void. Just as the process of bringing form to the world was marked at both its beginning (with the declaration that light was good), and at its end (with the declaration that the division between Earth and Sea was good), so the process of filling the Earth is marked at its beginning, with a declaration that the world’s first inhabitants are good.

This has been a long and energetic day, and our examination of it has left us in need of respite. Luckily, this is just what we get from the next sentence:

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

The Third Day is now at an end. We might ask all the questions that came up in regard to the Second Day again. Did all these events happen before the Third Day, or during it? But for now we decide that our energy would be better spent if it were conserved.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Nine ]}

____________________________________________________

^{* Part I.Eight.1 & 7}

^{**Part I.Six.4}

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:12-13 ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Ten

Gazing once again at the cover of the book we see that only two things are missing: The Animals and the Couple. We now have Sky, Earth and Sea, Plants, Day and Night.

But then we realize we are missing the Sun, Moon, and Stars as well. In the Story we seem to have moved on to the emergence of Life. The Sun, Moon, and Stars are not living things, and we fear they may be left out of the Story. Has the artist mislead us about the final picture?

But what if the Author of the Story comes from a culture that believed in the deity of the Heavenly bodies? The Greeks believed the spheres had souls, if not pure divinity! Other cultures worshiped the Sun as God. Perhaps the Author has not mentioned them yet because the Story is working up from the lowest forms of life to the highest. If the celestial objects are seen as living things, surely they will be saved for last.

That the Story will continue with the creation of animals on the Fourth Day is of little doubt for us. The author has clearly begun to resolve the Second Tension, the emptiness of the Earth, by populating the land with plants. Unless the Sea is to be populated with plants next (and we find this unlikely, as even Sea plants grow from the Earth) we expect to find ourselves introduced to the animals as we turn back to the text.

We are, therefore, surprised to find the following lines as our author’s next entry:

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

These lines sound eerily like those that first introduced us to light. We even have the mention of dividing Day and Night. But much has changed.

First, there is the fact that the order is not for Light but for Lights. We have a shift, that is, from the one thing that all light sources emit to those sources themselves. To this point we have known only that there was light, not how it was produced.

Second, is the fact that these lights are to be placed. For the first time we realize that the Author never said from what direction the Light that God created-and-divided comes. Though the Earth has been made locatable, and even has been formed into a body that is part Dry, part Sea, the Light has never been located, much less formed.

Third, is the fact that the Lights are now to divide Day and Night, where before this job had fallen to God. The author seems to be having the God-character hand over a primary duty. What kind of god is this? Does it grow tired? Why would the Author wait till now to tell us about this transfer of responsibility?

We think back over the progress of the Story. There has been a gradual introduction of form which began and ended with a declaration of goodness. Now what is sure to be a gradual introduction of content has begun with another such declaration. There were Two Tensions; now one is resolved and the second is being dealt with.

A three-part pattern has emerged over the first three Days: it is comprised of Creating, Dividing, and Naming. Likewise the Creating that occurs on each Day has begun to fluctuate between the dichotomy, “Let there be/and there was,” and the trichotomy, “Let there be/And God made/and there was.” Even the latter itself has fluctuated.

This is a story filled with movement—and directed movement at that. We noticed on the Third Day how the God-character, by commanding that the Earth bring forth plants, involves part of Creation in the production of another part. But in retrospect we saw that this was also the positive pole of the earlier production of Heaven out of the separation of Waters from Waters. This new participation by Creation in the creative act was the second step in a development.

The third step we saw was that the Earth was commanded to produce living things; that is, things that could reproduce themselves. But, mirroring the fact that the God-character had enlisted the participation of the Earth in the creation of Plants, Plants were only given the power to reproduce themselves in partnership with the Earth.

Thus it appears that the Author has laid out the following development: God first involves Creation in creation in an inverted way (Heaven from waters), then in a positive way (Plants from Earth), and then in an independent-though-communal way (Plants from Plants using Earth).

The delegation of responsibility to the “lights” for the dividing of Day and Night, and thereby the structuring of Time, represents a new stage in the process. Not only does this represent a turning-over of responsibility to Creation, but this responsibility is given up without the qualifications with which the others were saddled. The Lights are not given a job they can only perform when commanded (as when the Earth brought forth Plants), nor a job they can perform only in cooperation with some other part of Creation (as the Plants can only reproduce using the Earth). Rather, the Lights are given the job of dividing Day and Night, full stop.

Full stop? we ask ourselves. Full stop. We look back over the sentence from the book. We find, rather than a period, a semi-colon after the Lights are given their job. What follows that semi-colon is a completely new kind of qualification, and the introduction of something so radical it troubles humanity to this day: purpose.

The Lights are not told, “Do this because I tell you,” nor “Do this, but only in partnership.” They are told, “Do this for these reasons.” Their job is to divide Day and Night, but their purpose is to be “signs,” to mark “seasons,” “days,” and “years.” Four purposes on the Fourth Day.

It is the first of these that arrests our attention. The lights are to be for signs, the Author reports. That leads us to ask, Signs to whom? Signs are always signs to someone, to someone who can see them as signs.

Then we realize. Something new enters the Universe with these signs. The process of creation reaches its highest peak yet. And this is more revolutionary than anything that has gone before: it is intelligence.

For a sign to be a sign there must be a mind to which it can signify. There can be no sign in a Universe without intelligence. If the purpose of the lights is to be signs, then that means they are to be signs for some being or beings who are not only alive (as plants are), not only sentient (as animals are), but thoughtful. Without an interpreter with the ability to think, nothing can be a sign.

We have, then, three breakthroughs in the Story with this creation of Lights. The first is the delegation of what was a responsibility of the Creator to a part of the Creation. The second is that the responsibility so delegated came with only one limitation, that it be fulfilled by beings bound by four purposes. The third is that the first of these purposes portends the entrance of intelligent life into the Universe.

We not only have form, but life to fill that form. We not only have life, but purpose. We not only have purpose, but we are promised significance (that is, communicative thought). The emptiness begins to fade.

But we were expecting animals on the fourth day. We were expecting a further population of the Earth. What we got was a population of Heaven. This leaves us with much to consider.

____________________________________________________

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:14, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Eleven

The lights are to be “in the firmament of Heaven,” the Author tells us. But the little word “in” is tricky. We recall that it was the first word of the Story, and that we spent some time asking whether it was the God-character that was in the beginning, or God’s activity of creation. But then we also stumbled across the word when considering the firmament for the first time. We had noted that the firmament was between the waters and thus a thing could now be said to have a definite location: it could be in a space because it could be surrounded by definite boundaries.

Now we have the lights in the firmament. But there are two meanings for the word “in.” The first is equivalent to “inside of,” as when we say that the hat is “in” the box. It is the three-dimensional meaning.

The second meaning is that associated with windows, as when we say “the candle is in the window.” This is the two-dimensional meaning. When dealing with the sky it is difficult to tell which of the two we mean.

Take for example a cloud that is “in” the sky. Do we mean that it is inside a large volume of air, or that we can see it between the tree branches above our heads? That is, are we treating the sky as a three-dimensional box of air that contains the cloud, or are we taking our surroundings as a frame in which we see the sky and its cloud? Do we see the cloud as an ice-cube in a glass of water, or as a bird in a painting?

We wonder this because we are trying to picture for ourselves where these lights were located. Was it like this:

That would be the three-dimensional understanding of the word “in.”

Or was it like this:

That would be the two-dimensional understanding of “in.” The lights would not be physically inside the firmament, but would be “within” the “frame” of the sky.

We pause for a moment and ask ourselves why we are wondering about this. It must be for curiosity more than anything else. Those Waters “above” Heaven are difficult to picture, and though we haven’t read it yet, we are assuming that the Lights are the stars. If the first picture above is correct, then Heaven encompasses the entire Universe and the waters above it are pushed out to the edge. However, if the second picture is correct, Heaven would seem to only be the atmosphere of Earth.

But if the Author means us to take the second picture, we must reexamine the assumptions with which we read the first lines of this story. If Heaven is just the atmosphere of Earth, then “God created the Heaven and the Earth” does not mean the same as “God created the Universe.” At most it could mean that God created what would become Earth and its atmosphere along with the space in which Earth existed.

With the introduction of the Lights, the Author emphasizes the solitude in which the Earth has existed so far. But whether the Universe itself has been meaningfully empty, or whether there simply had been no significant empty space to speak of, the Author does not tell us. We realize that the Story is filled with these possibilities that invite exploration but refuse closure.

Part of the beauty of this story, it would seem, is that it serves to open these regions for wonder. Kant wrote in his third Critique that beautiful objects were beautiful because they continually start the mind on new examinations. They give off the aura of having yet more to be discovered. Another word for this, of course, is “mystery.”

Returning to the text we find that our digression started with the first of the four purposes for the Lights: to be signs. With a bit of pleasant alliteration we are reminded that the second purpose is to be “for seasons.” Had we been the Author’s editor we might have pointed out that it makes sense to say that something will act as a sign, but not that it will act as a season. We can see this if we expand the implicit grammar of the sentence:

Let them be for signs, and let them be for seasons, and let them be for days, and let them be for years.

The word “for” cannot be understood in the same sense in the first two purposes. How then are we to read its second occurrence?

Let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. Had the sentence read, “Let them be for signs for seasons, and for days, and years,” things might have made more sense to us. Then the Author would be telling us that the lights were to act as signs of the seasons (to act as signals to people that a new season had arrived), of the days (to act as signals that told people when special days, like the Equinoxes, had arrived), and the years (to signal the arrival of a new year). But there is an “and” between “signs” and “seasons,” so syntactically this reading will not be legitimated so easily.

Since the “for” before “signs” and the “for” before “seasons” cannot mean the same thing, perhaps we could recast the second and third “for’s” as “signs of.” Or we could use the verb, “to mark.” Then the sentence would read:

Let them be for signs, and [let them] mark seasons, and mark days, and years.

Or:

Let them be for signs, and signs of seasons, and signs of days, and years.

But we are also used to talking about the constellation “for” the month in which we were born. In that case we could recast the “for’s” as “belong to.”

Let the lights be for signs, and let the lights belong to seasons, and let the lights belong to days, and years.

Having made this substitution so as to clarify the meaning of the sentence, we notice that even the first “for” could be replaced by “mark” or “belong to.” This would radically change the sense we had given the sentence, however, as the Lights would not be the signs themselves, but would somehow mark or belong to those signs (whatever they might be).

But looking back at the sentence as a whole we find this reading counterintuitive. We decide that if someone were to be confused by the original wording, we would offer . . .

Let the lights be for signs, and let the lights belong to seasons, and let the lights belong to days, and years.

. . . as another way to say the same thing.

Before moving on to the next sentence, there is one more thing that catches our attention: the recurrence of “days” among the four purposes. Having already said that the Lights would separate Day and Night, why would the Author report the God-character saying that they would also be for “days?” We suspect that the word here must mean something different than it had earlier in the sentence.

If that is so, then we could say the same thing by, “Let there be lights to divide Day and Night, and let them also mark certain special days as well.” That is, God is setting up the Lights not only to repetitively divide time between Light and Dark, but to specify certain periods of Light and Dark amongst the overall flow as having special importance.

As the Lights have now been given charge of the Day-Night cycle, it is interesting that they are given the further job of marking larger cycles than had been mentioned before. Not only has the Author told us that God turns over the duty of dividing Night and Day to the Lights, but God has created a new extension of that duty for the same Lights to fulfill.

But is this a radical introduction? Or is it simply a consequence of the kind of things the Lights are?

It would be difficult, for instance, to understand how the God-character’s continual separation of Light and Dark would produce seasons and years. What would make one period of the cycle different from any other? The divine activity would be more like a sine-wave than anything else.

But having turned over this cycle of light and dark to beings that themselves cycle, larger and more complex patterns emerge. There is now no longer one Being governing the function, but multiple variables (the Lights themselves) all interacting to divide Day and Night. A new structure has been introduced into Time.

What is this we have just said? A new structure? But this is form, not content! We had thought the forming activity had ended on the Third Day. Nevertheless, just as had happened on the First Day, a new structure is given to Time on the Fourth.

And the mirroring goes another level deeper. While the climax of spatial formation occurred on the Third Day, the beginning of filling had begun on that same day. Instead of devoting the Third Day solely to completing the task of formation, the Author started the next task as well. Now, on what we expected to be a Day solely devoted to the task of filling, we find the task of forming to spill over.

Therefore, not only does the Fourth Day mirror the First, but it mirrors the Third as well. The intricacy grows. The mystery and beauty as well.

The need to be continually ready to adjust our theory is reaffirmed with the next sentence.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Eleven ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:14, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Twelve

And let them be for lights in the firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth: and it was so.

We smile. This author has once again shown a fondness for repetition. There are to be . . .

lights in the firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night

and those lights are to be for . . .

lights in the firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth.

They are to be Lights that divide Day and Night, but also that provide Light to something that otherwise would be dark: the Earth. We had previously worked with the assumption that the Lights had but four purposes on this Fourth Day, but now it appears they have five. They are for signs, for seasons, for days, for years, and for giving light to the Earth.

This is not merely an addition to the previous list, however. It is also a clarification thereof. This new purpose establishes the direction of the first four. It tells us for whom the Lights are performing the functions of structuring and specifying Time. They do these things for the Earth.

Is this our geocentric bias coming out? we wonder to ourselves. Is the Author really saying that the lights’ first four purposes were purely for the Earth? Has the Author said that the lights will not serve the same purposes for other planets as well?

We respond that the Lights are placed “out there” in firmament, but only directly tied down to one planet in the Story: Earth. The formation and filling of the Earth has, after all, been the center of focus from the beginning. It only makes sense that the Author would portray the Lights as serving their five purposes for the Earth.

If this is the case, however, we ask ourselves why we found this fifth purpose so important in specifying to whom the purposes are directed. If the Earth is clearly the focus from the beginning, why did we appeal to the fifth purpose to prove that the first four also focus on the Earth? We wouldn’t have referred to this new case of Earth-focus if we had thought the overall Earth-directedness of the Story was enough to make our point.

We seem to have argued ourselves into a corner.^* Is this how the beauty of the Story expresses itself? Up to now our internal debates had been exploratory and friendly. Is there something more at stake in this one?

We search our memories looking for what motivated us to enlist the fifth purpose as support for the Earth-directedness of the other four. What would it mean that the others were meant for the Earth?

Then we see it. To say that the purposes are purposes for the Earth is to say that the Lights are to be signs for the Earth. And since the Earth as a planet is not the kind of thing that can recognize and react to signs, this means that the Light-Signs will be directed to minds on the Earth.

“What is so important about that, though?” part of us wants to ask. It is important, we answer, because it supports our earlier contention that the introduction of signs into the Universe heralds the coming of intelligence. It signals the imminence of the arrival of a new level of Creation.

This new specificity in the link between the Lights and the Earth appears to us to bolster one side of an argument we had not even let ourselves have: couldn’t the intelligence for whom the signs are created simply be that of the Creator? Might their placement in the firmament not portend a new level of created life, but instead merely emphasize the already-present intelligence of the Creator? Haven’t we just worked ourselves up for nothing?

But then we remember the cover illustration, with the two people standing on the shoreline. We have not met them yet in the Story. They are still to come.

What if they are the God and his Consort? our other side asks. Even still, we respond, there will be a new intelligence coming into the Story. If there is a Consort we have not met her yet. And if the Lights are to be signs for the God-character they would necessarily be signs for the Goddess (whether she could interpret them or not). What affects one member of a couple affects the other.

And if it is true that the Lights are to be what they are for the Earth, this means that God will have to come to Earth. To this point in the Story, the Author has refused to tell us where God is. This would put the Earth in a whole new light, and change the meaning of the Story completely. It would cease to be the Story of how the Earth was formed and filled, and would become the Story of how God created a home.

Either way the chips fall, then, we must keep our eyes open to the populating of the Earth. It will introduce a new inhabitant whether human or divine. This much is clear.

But enough of this for now. How did the sentence end? “And let them be for lights in the firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth: and it was so.”

We had forgotten! Each Day’s creation element contains an, “and it was so.” But the structure so far has fluctuated between a dichotomy and a trichotomy. What has been the structure so far on the Fourth Day?

First we had a “Let there be . . .” passage, but this was followed immediately by a “for the purpose of . . .” passage. So, we have had the following structure: “Let there be/For the purpose of/And it was so.” As the Day continues we will have to see whether this division is further developed. It could be that the “For the purpose of” section is merely a subclause of the “Let there be” section. That is, it may not signal the institution of a new structure, but the modification of an old.

To decide this we examine the next sentence.

^[^{Click here to comment on Part I.Twelve ]}

____________________________________________________

^{*This happens to philosophers all the time.}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Thirteen

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Here we have it: the “And God made” part of the trichotomy. Therefore it would likely be best to say the structure is: Let there be [for the purpose of]/And it was/And God made.

But we are struck by the tripartite division of this “And God made” section. There is a Greater Light to rule the Day, a Lesser Light to rule the Night, and the Stars. This echoes the tripartite division of both the “Let there be” and the “And God made” sections from the Third Day (Where three kinds of plants were created.). But if this is the case, why had it not shown up in the “Let there be” section on the Fourth?

Of further interest is the fact that the Author clearly refers here to the Sun and the Moon, but either leaves out the Planets or lumps them in with the Stars. The categorization makes perfect sense to us, as the Planets and Stars appear the same to the naked eye. There may be differences of “twinkle” and motion, but the same could be said of the different species of birds or fish.

And beside this we have the fact that, as it is in itself, the Sun is a Star. It simply does not function as one from the viewpoint of Earth. From Earth the closest Star acts like a Sun. And from Earth the closest Planets show up as Stars.

We leave this subject to consider a more pressing one. We find the inclusion of the word “rule” in this sentence of far greater import than the lack of distinction between Stars and Planets. For the first time in the Story a clear “power term” has been used. For the first time the Author tells us that God has not only turned over a responsibility to Creation, but now God has given a position of power over one part of Creation to another part thereof.

This leads us to ask, what is the difference between Ruling over Day and Night, and dividing Day from Night? And why has it been phrased so far as dividing between “Day and Night” rather than “Light and Darkness”? Does it have something to do with the fact that the Moon and Stars bring Light even to the Night?

As we ponder these questions our eyes accidentally scan the next sentence:

And God set them in the firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

There is the contrast again, but this time stated in a new way! The Sun, Moon, and Stars are to rule Day and Night, but divide Light and Darkness.

We search for a way to understand the difference. It is clear to us how the Sun rules the Day: as it rises the Day comes, and as it sets the Day fades. The presence of Day depends on the presence of the Sun.

But what of the Moon’s rule over Night? Whereas the Darkness was first named Night, the Moon brings Light into the Darkness. It is as if the Moon rules the Night by limiting its Darkness. It is because of the Moon, after all, that you can cast a shadow at night. The Moon mitigates the darkness of Night by introducing Light.

The Moon, however, is a strange Ruler. It has two cycles after all, one which determines when it rises and sets, and the other which determines its phase. Both affect how much Light it mixes into the Darkness of Night. There are some Nights where the Moon does not rise at all, because it has joined the Sun to Rule the Day. There are others where the Moon does rise, but it is in its “New” phase and therefore has gone dark.

We can say, then, that the illumination of Day depends on the Sun, and the illumination of Night depends on the Moon. Therefore, they can be said to “rule” their respective times by controlling their Light supply. What then, can the Author mean by dividing Day and Night, or dividing Light and Darkness?

That the Sun divides light and darkness is clear from the fact that its presence determines whether it is light or dark here on Earth. And by dividing light and dark as it does, it also divides Day and Night. When it leaves, it brings on the Night, and when it returns, it brings on Day. Without its going and coming there would be no division between Day and Night. It would always be one or always the other.

So is it the Sun’s role in dividing these that allows the Author to write that the Lights do the dividing? If one member of the group does something it is not always inaccurate to say that the group did the thing. The Sun could act as representative or emissary of the Lights in dividing Day and Night, Light and Darkness.

We suppose it could be said that the Moon serves the same function, as the darkness of the Night depends on the presence and phase of the Moon. That is, for there to be a full separation of Light and Dark, the Moon is required to not show up. Therefore, it determines when and if there is a maximum difference between the two.

But what of the Day/Night division? The Moon’s presence does not affect the fact that it is Day. But perhaps the very fact that it shows up during the Day at some points of the month means that it is only most fully Day on those Days. That is, it would seem that on those Days the maximum possible amount of Light is present on Earth, as some that would normally be lost to Space is reflected towards the Earth by the Moon’s surface.

Perhaps then we could say that just as the Night is most dark when the Moon is absent, the Day is most light when the Moon is present. That is, the Night is most Night without the Moon, and the Day is most Day with it. But this would mean that the Moon Rules the Night by making it less Night, by making it less dark. What kind of Ruler makes a thing less of what it is?

But we have begun to chase these topics more for our amusement than our understanding.^* We must not cease to hear the Story. We look back at the sentence under consideration.

And God set them in the firmament of the Heaven.

Not only has God said, and made, but now God has set. The author has brought us back to the theme of location which we had considered above.^** It is not, it seems, enough to merely make the Lights. They must be placed as well.

We feel, then, that the Author is mocking us, as we found ourselves unable to decide earlier on exactly what placement was meant.^*** Is the Sun in Heaven in the way it is “in” a window, or in the way it is “in” the Milky Way Galaxy?

Just as the making of the Lights was accompanied by five purposes, the setting of the Lights is accompanied by three. Two of the three overlap with the five, but the dividing of Light and Darkness is only present in the setting section. It was its (fraternal? identical?) twin (dividing Day and Night) that was present in the making section.

How will this affect our tripartite creation structure? Have we added a new element? We must think this over for a moment.

No, we decide, it does not affect the structure. This has to do with placement, not creation, and therefore does not belong to the Day’s Creating part. Rather, it must belong to some other section, as Dividing and Naming do.

But we suddenly realize that there has been no Naming on Day Four. We would expect the Author to have God name the Sun, Moon, and Stars. But this never happens. They are all referred to, but there is no Naming ceremony.

And what of the Dividing? It is clearly present. But it is present as part of the Creating element! As with the Second Day’s creation of Heaven, it is difficult to distinguish the Creating from the Separating. The two are interconnected, and even intermixed.

One thing that is present is the “God saw that it was good” motif. So far the Author has noted that God saw that (A) Light on the First Day was good, (B) the division of the Earth’s surface into Dry Land and Seas on the Third Day was good, and (C) the Plants on the Third Day were good as well. Now, on the Fourth Day, we are told that the Lights being set in the Firmament to fulfill their various functions is good. In recognizing that the Fourth Day mirrors both the First Day and the Third, it is to be expected that something be declared good on this Day.

This has been a long Day for us, as we make our way through the Story. But after reading the next line we realize it is over.

[ Click here to comment on Part I.Thirteen ]

____________________________________________________

^{*A not-uncommon fault of philosophers.}
^{** Part I.Six and Eleven}
^{***Part I.Eleven}

^{[ Scripture quotations: Genesis 1:16-18, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Fourteen

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

We find ourselves tempted to ask the now-traditional, “Did all of that happen on the Fourth Day or before it?” But we valiantly resist. After all, we are eager to discover the developments of the Fifth Day.

Turning the page we find:

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the Earth in the open firmament of Heaven.

Having brought a part of Creation into the creative act during the production of Plants, and having turned over responsibility and Rule regarding Light, Darkness, Night, and Day, God continues to delegate duties. This time it is to the Waters—that other half of Earth.

It would seem to be the Waters’ turn. But after this they will not be simply “even” with the Earth. They, after all, have received the responsibility of producing animal life. This is a new level of Creation which we have not encountered before.

The Author here emphasizes the fact that we have shifted fully into the filling phase of the Story. The Waters are not only to bring forth moving creatures, but to bring them forth abundantly. Where the land was simply ordered to bring forth three genera of plants, the Seas are commanded to bring forth two genera of animals, and one of them in great numbers.

An uncharitable, but amusing, thought comes upon us suddenly.^* If all the Plants were brought forth on Dry Ground, what are the animals from the Sea going to eat? Perhaps each other. But till now the Story had been so beautiful!

As penance for our inappropriate levity, we remind ourselves that the Author has left out several things, seemingly on purpose: When was the Dry Land created? What was the firmament made of? What happened to the Waters above Heaven? In a picture honed for structure and beauty, some fringes will remain hidden.

So, no matter what they are to eat, these Creatures move and have Life.

Once we come across this explicit statement, we notice that we had earlier read something into the text that was not there. We had taken the Plants of the Third Day to be the first occurrence of Life in the Story. But now we wonder what the Author’s view of life is.

Perhaps it is only the Moving Creatures that have Life. “Life” for this Author would then be restricted to what we would call “Sentient Life.” So, while we found the advent of Plants to be the momentous breaking-in of Life, the Author of the Story would see the infusion of Sea Animals as that important event. Either way, the process of Creation continues to mount.

But why now? we wonder. It would seem more structurally appropriate to have this “bringing forth” session occur on a Day that corresponded to the Third in the overall structure of the Story. But it was the Fourth that matched the Third, so the Fifth comes a Day too late. In fact if it had a twin in the earlier three-day sequence of Formation, it would line up with the Second.

What occurred on that Day?

Turning the page back we find, “And the evening and the morning were the second day” and look immediately before it.

It was the creation of Heaven to separate the waters above and below! The Day that corresponds to the Fifth is the one that set up the two areas that are now to be populated: Sky and Sea. By populating Sea and Sky, an intermediate stage in the Filling of the Earth, we hearken back to an intermediate stage in the Forming of the Earth.

We feel adventure in this sentence. Abundance, Sea, Movement, Life, Flight, Open Sky. Through it, we can feel the Author’s emotions swell. We wonder whether it might not have been more accurate to say “burst” instead of “bring,” as we picture the Oceans suddenly explode into Life and the Birds “burst forth” into flight.

The “fowl” are to fly above the Earth, just as on (or before?) the First Day the Spirit of God “moved upon the face of the waters.” That the Creatures of the Water are likewise qualified as moving also reminds us of the First Day, as these are the only two Days where movement has been noted. And like the Lights, the Fowl belong “in” the firmament. This time it is easy to decide which sense of the word is meant.

Since God said “Let there be,” we expect God to then set about making. And our expectations are fulfilled.

____________________________________________________

^{*Welcome to the mind of a philosopher. . . .}

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:19-20, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Fifteen

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

We smile as we see the Author once again repeat but also develop a theme. As on the Fourth Day, when God sets about to actually create what has been commanded to be, there occurs a specification of the sub-kinds that are created.

On the Fourth Day the order for Lights was filled by three previously unnamed lights: Sun, Moon, and Stars. This time, however, having ordered “moving creatures” God fills the order by creating both “great whales” and “every living creature that moveth.” Evidently, then, there are at least two kinds of Living, Moving Creatures, of which “great whales” forms one.

The structural development in this sentence is that “bringing forth” recurs in the “And God made” section. This has never happened before. Perhaps it was just a clever way of working in another reference to “abundance,” as we note that “life,” “movement,” and “creature” all recur as well. But in the midst of a section in which the God-character has always been given lone agency, to have the participation of the Waters mentioned again, and to label that participation as resulting in abundance is significant.

Where it had been difficult to tell whether it was the Firmament’s creation which separated the Waters, or the Waters’ separation that created the Firmament; where it had been difficult to tell if it was the Waters’ gathering together that revealed Dry Land, or the appearance of Dry Land that drove the Waters together; where it became clear that the Earth was to bring forth the Plants, only to have God obey the command; where the Beings to whom God had delegated the most independence, power, and responsibility also had to be commanded, created, and placed by God; now it is evident on the Fifth Day that God’s commanding Creation to Create and God’s Creating are one and the same.

Further echoing the past development, we note that not only the Plants brought forth by Earth were restricted to self-reproduction “after their kind,” but the Animals, both aquatic and avian, bear the same limitation. But missing is the reference to “seed,” and thus the continued dependence on the original Spring of life (whether Earthy or Watery) for participation in the reproductive process.

By this lack we find the freewheeling adventuresomeness of the Fifth Day reaffirmed, for neither Bird nor Sea Creature remains rooted.

The sense of constraint, we realize, has been gradually lifted. Where the Firmament was lodged between two Waters, and the Waters below were gathered into one place, the Plants were empowered to recreate themselves in consort with the Earth, and the Lights were freed to a cyclical, though complex and harmonious movement. Now the Swimming and Flying Creatures have been empowered to reproduce on their own.

The exuberance of the Day is brought toward completion by another divine discovery of goodness. This is in accordance with the other parallels to the Third Day, though it is surprising given the correspondence to the Second Day. It begins to appear that the Second Day may be the only one not graced by a pronouncement of goodness.

That the Day is not over yet, we discover upon reading the next sentence:

And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the Earth.

This one will require a couple readings to fully take in. So much is new!

First, we have a pronouncement of blessing! This is a mode of speech that this character has never used before. But it is also a command like the past “Let there be’s.” As in the Fourth Day, the newly created Beings are given a task. This time, however, it is not to bring more Form; rather, it is to fill.

Just as God had turned over the final Forming of Time to the created Lights, God now turns over the work of Filling to the created Animals. The Lights filled Heaven just by their being, while their task was to form. The Animals, however, both Fill the Seas and Earth by being and as their task. The essence and activity of this part of Creation are one.

But there is a curious wrinkle. The fowl, who fly the open Heaven, are to multiply in the Earth. This is consonant with how birds are: they move through the air, but reproduce on land (or in land-bound trees, shrubs, etc.). They are instructed to multiply in the Earth but not to fill it. We assume it must be their job to fill the air, though not so much as to turn Day into Night.

Rereading the sentence we are once more struck by the fact that it relays a blessing, and yet that that blessing is a command. We have encountered blessings in the past, but they usually started with, “May.” “May the wind be always at your back.” “May you be well till we meet again.” They were closer to expressions of hope than commands.

But as we examine them closer we realize there is a residue of command even in these more familiar blessings. “May the wind be always at your back,” is meant, if whimsically, to affect the weather (or the “way things go for you.”). They are, as it were, expressions of hope to Fate that we, were we more romantically minded, would actually expect to be heeded. This is especially clear in those most colloquial of blessings as, “Good luck,” and, “Break a leg.” They are, as it were, telling you to do something (or, in the first case to have something).

In this old story, the sense of command is in the foreground. But it is more than just a command. It is a task- or purpose-giving. “Bring me that knife!” is a command, but it is not one that provides the person you command with an ongoing, life-determining raison d’etre. The divine blessing relayed by the Author on the Fifth Day does just this, however. This is a blessing meant to affect not just this moment, nor just the foreseeable future, but the entire lifetime of the Animals in question and the lifetimes of their descendants.

Their descendants. The phrase rushes in on us. The Author of this story saw the Animals of the world as carrying this blessing, as being the current bearers of that divine task. This story was not just a story for the Author. It was an explanation.

Looking at the Animals going about their lives, we might ask, Why do the animals do this? The Author would have said, The story tells you. They are fulfilling a mission from God. They are filling the Earth.

But if that is the case, if what Animals do is fill the Earth, then the Second Tension of the Story is ever being resolved. The emptiness of the Earth is one that is always being-filled, not one that ever is filled.

We look up from the book and realize that we are surrounded by the Story. It hasn’t ended yet.

____________________________________________________

^{[ Scripture quotations: Genesis 1:21-22, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Sixteen

To say we have gotten caught up in the Story would not quite capture it. The Story has caught us, caught up to us. The world we see around us is the world the Author is telling us a story about. We’ve begun to see reality through a Story.

Looking at the book, now sitting across from us, we see that the cover illustration yet lacks but two elements, as the Sea Creatures and Birds have been added. Only the land animals and the Couple are missing. Surely they must come soon.

We open the book once more and find the place where we had stopped. We read:

And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

So the Fifth Day ended with the blessing. Or perhaps it began with the blessing. That all depends on the “on or before” question we have failed to answer so many times before. We leave it once again in anticipation of the Sixth Day:

And God said, Let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the Earth after his kind: and it was so.

Here we see the now familiar motif, “Let there be,” under its “Let the ____ bring forth” guise. And, as always, it is accompanied by, “And it was so.” We have learned to expect that the next sentence will detail the actual Creation of what is here commanded. But for now we dive into the sentence at hand.

It would seem that, as with the Plants and Lights, the genus here identified falls into three species. This time it is “living creatures” that are to be produced, and they consist of the “cattle,” “creeping things,” and “beasts of the Earth.” This makes us all the more curious as to why only two groups of sea creatures were identified: the “great whales” and everything else. Perhaps it was the Birds who made the third.

This reminds us: Did we ever find all three of the things we expect from each Day (Creating, Dividing, Naming) on the Fifth? There had been Creating and Dividing on the Fourth, but no naming. Instead of Naming there was an Assignment of Tasks, or a Provision of Purpose. On the Fifth Day, however, there was no Dividing at all. Rather there was Creating and the Provision of Purpose (this time in the form of a Blessing).

The Naming element, then, seems to have dropped out altogether after the first three Days. The Dividing element has now disappeared as well. In their place, then is the Providing Purpose (or Blessing). We will look for it here on the Sixth Day as well.

Thinking back, we can trace the Provision of Purpose to the Third Day, in its reference to the reproduction (re-creation) of Plants. It is through this process, in part, that the Earth will be filled, and thus the Second Tension resolved. Though the Author never states that this is in fact the purpose or task of the Plants, it is clear that they are being used in the Story for just this reason. We now see, therefore, that the new element in the Fourth, Fifth, and (we expect) Sixth Days spans the structural divide between the Third and Fourth. If there is a crease or hinge between those two days, it is well reinforced.

Just as the Creating element is always present each Day, we find once again that the sub-elements, “Let there be,” and, “And it was” are as well. As part of this Creative act, a member of Creation itself has once again been enlisted. The Earth is to bring forth these three groups of Animals, just as it brought forth the Plants before.

This means that the Earth has now been used to produce two fundamentally different kinds of Beings. Does this make it “even” with the Waters? The rivalry between the two parts of the planet is a murky one, as the Waters likewise brought forth two different kinds of beings: the swimming and the flying. In a story with such attention to structure we would expect there to be some kind of balance. Whether a perfect one has been achieved may be up to the individual reader.

The difference between the Beings that the Earth is now to bring forth, and those which it did on the Third Day, is as follows: These new Beings will depend on the original Beings for their sustenance, but will not depend on the Earth for their reproduction. Land Animals do not re-create themselves through buried seeds as Plants do. The Earth, as it were, produces the Animals and then sets them free.

As we noted before, the amount of freedom or range provided to the new Creations has gradually grown. Here we see that not only are the Animals to be set free from that-from-which-they-came (with regard to re-creating themselves), but they are also turned loose into a world full of food. Unlike the animals from the Fifth Day, the sustenance of those on the Sixth is already provided for. That is, they are not constrained by nourishment.

The condition that the Animals only recreate themselves rather than any other animals (that is, that they reproduce “after their kind”) is fascinating. Though God has given the Earth, Sea, Plants, and Animals the power to create, the Beings that may continue to exercise this power are required to only create within their kind. The Earth and Sea can produce things that are not of their own kind (that is, not Earth and Sea) only at the instigation of God or the implantation of seeds. Therefore, though there has been a transfer of responsibility for, and power over, Creation from—the Creator to the Creation—there are strings attached.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Sixteen ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Scripture quotations: Genesis 1:23-24, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Seventeen

And God made the beast of the Earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the Earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

We find the third member of the Creating element in this sentence, completing the “Let there be/And it was/And God made” triad. This third member is accompanied by a declaration of goodness as well, leaving the Second Day as the only day without one.

After seeing so many patterns in this story, we find it odd that we cannot discover the reasoning behind when and where goodness is to be seen. Perhaps the Author only includes it when something is actually created; since the Second Day could be read as the “mere” separation of Waters from Waters, it would contain no positive creation. But the separation of the Earth’s surface into Dry Land and Sea was declared good, and there is no positive creation in rolling back the Water to reveal the Earth.

Remembering our internal debates earlier about whether the “appearance” of dry ground constituted the mere revealing of Earth or the positive creation thereof, we see that the presence of a declaration of goodness could signal that this was a “positive creation.” That is, it may be the fact that the dry Earth was actually created, rather than uncovered, on the Third Day that prompted the declaration of goodness. Therefore, with no positive creative act on the Second Day there was nothing new to be seen as good.

More importantly, however, we realize that a story that drives us into such adventures of reasoning and speculation is truly worthy of the title “beautiful.” That each new sentence both brings clarity and another layer of complexity is the mark of a work of art. Who could have written this? we wonder.

Reading on, we find:

And God said, . . .

What is this? Another “Let there be” section? God is going to create twice on the Sixth Day? We have seen that the Author is fond of repetition, as if this story was poetry, but this double-creation on the Sixth Day is surprising.

Perhaps this is some kind of completion; maybe the Story is being brought to an end. Song writers in our time do this frequently, repeating the last chorus or line of a song at the end thereof. Whatever the reason, there is something special about this day.

We continue:

. . . Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: . . .

We find this too much—bewildering. Did the Author just blindside us by pluralizing the God-character? Where did that come from? We inhale deeply, resolved to take the phrase again, one word at a time:

Let . . .

This word we can handle. We have seen it before. This is how a new act of creation should start, given what we have seen over the past Six Days. Slightly calmed we brave the next:

. . . us . . .

No. This is too much.

We cannot keep our eyes on the page. But to look around the room again, or to glimpse the trees outside the windows, is to see the Story’s world. We cannot escape it by turning away, because we turn in to it by doing so.

We force ourselves to look back at the word.

Us.

God is speaking in the first-person plural. Too many possibilities force themselves upon us. They all battle to be the first to reach thought.

What does this mean? Is God talking to someone?

But where did this someone come from? There hasn’t been anyone in the Story that could talk back.

But maybe God is talking to the Earth. Or to the animals?

But what would that mean? That the Creation is now worthy of being referred to by its Creator in the first-person plural? That God and Universe can form an us? This would be participation at a level unseen before.

Or is God talking to the Author? It is the Author that is making these things happen on the printed page. Is the Author of the Universe enlisting the help of the Author of the Story? But this would cycle: the Author of the Story would have the Author of the Universe enlist the help of the Author of the Story. Either this Author is the most self-important person in the history of humanity, or this God is the most personable in the history of humanity. Or we have misunderstood.

Perhaps it is nothing but the European “Royal We.” But if so, why would it occur for the first time here? Is this a European story? Do the monarchs of other societies refer to themselves so?

There is another possibility, however, that we struggle not to think, because its logic is too confusing.

Is God many? Are there more than one?

And then it hits us. This would explain why God not only has to speak, “Let there be,” each Day, but then has to make that which was commanded. This split between command and execution was introduced on purpose after having been absent on the First Day. But how are we to understand this?

God gives the command which God obeys. God is two and yet both are called God as if they are only one. On the First Day God is one, but has a Spirit(wind?-breath?). On the Second Day God is one-but-two. Now God refers to God in the first person plural.

Unable to hold all these thoughts together we force our eyes to the next word:

. . . make . . .

Here we have a safe word. Certainly it is different than the past instances of, “Let there be.” But this time things have already been made drastically different by the introduction of the word “us.” After that, anything would seem normal.

As we contemplate the word, however, the import of this difference begins to grow on us. Let us make. Not Let there be. This time it is not a command. It is an exhortation. It is an invitation to cooperative action. This time there will be no command and response. This time it will be intention and execution. Here will be a new level of divine self-cooperation. But what was it God has decided to make?

. . . man . . .

And then we realize that we are witnessing the completion of the cover illustration. Here we have the final filling of the Earth. The Second Tension is to be brought to resolution.

But this is not yet the full sentence. There was a qualification for how humanity was to be made:

. . . in our image, after our likeness . . .

The answer to who the couple on the cover was has been given in a way we could not have foreseen. We assumed they were human but realized they could be gods. It seems now that they are human images of God. The thought is beyond us.

The author reports that God wants to make humans in Their image and likeness. Though it sounds strange, we use the third-person plural of God here because the Author has God use the first-person plural of Themself. “Themself.” We know it isn’t a word, but it is the only one that seems appropriate here. God is somehow plural (“Them”) and yet one (“self”).

We are familiar with talk about “images” and “likenesses,” though the latter has fallen out of popular usage. The inclusion of both terms reminds us that to be an “image” of something requires looking “like” it. But the word “image” has even been introduced in computer-speak, not to refer to visual similarity, but software similarity. A computer can be made to “capture an image” of its hard-drive so as to restore the drive to the same state at a later date, or so as to transfer that image onto another “blank” drive. This use of “image” has more to do with content than appearance.

Philosophers have long been fascinated with images and pictures, in part because of their connection to signs and people through the idea of “representation.” Pictures are called “representations” of whatever they are pictures of. Symbols “represent” companies, countries, clubs, status, etc. Even people represent things. An ambassador represents her country to the government of another while an emissary represents one party to another. A lawyer represents his clients before a judge. A manager represents her clients to current and potential employers.

In many countries the governments consist entirely of “representatives.” These individuals represent and make decisions for the people of a certain section of the nation. Representatives are always given the power to “speak for” those they represent. Some are even given the power to act for and decide for those they represent. Philosophers find all these issues to be of utmost importance, especially as they involve complicated and momentous questions of responsibility.

The God-character says that humans are to be made in Their image, and we have pointed out that images are representations. It is almost as if, we imagine, humans are to be models for God. That is, just as a model presents to an audience what the new line of clothing from some designer will look like, it is to be the job of humans to present to the world what God looks like.

But we must be careful with such analogies, as they decide the semantic range of the words “image” and “likeness” in favor of the visual and at the expense of all the other possibilities. Whichever of the many meanings of “image” and “likeness” is intended, this much is clear: Humans will be designed to re-present God, and that, etymologically, means to “again-make-present” God.

Exactly what about God will be made-present by humans is something we find ourselves unable to decide at the moment. But as everything from photographs, to supposedly “abstract” paintings, to CEO’s represent something, the possibilities are endless. The story has opened another mystery for us to explore.

We decide to keep reading to see if any of our questions receive answers.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Seventeen ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Scripture quotations: Genesis 1:25-26, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Eighteen

and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth.

And let them have dominion. This is the second time in the Story that an explicit power term has been used. The first was when the Sun and Moon were made to “Rule” over Day and Night. Perhaps this pairing will help us understand what is meant by the word “dominion” here.

The Sun and Moon’s Rule over Day and Night was closely connected to their dividing Day and Night, Light and Dark. That is, their Rule seemed to be expressed primarily in bringing Form to Life on Earth by structuring its Time. Through being established as Rulers of Day and Night they gave a rubric or pattern to the terrestrial activities

We begin to suspect, therefore, that when humans are given “dominion,” the same issues must be involved: bringing form and structure. Thinking back to the Sea Creatures and Fowl, we recall the term “abundance” being used to describe how the Sea brought them forth. Those inhabitants were then commanded to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the Sea. The exuberance of that Day still stands out to us.

In the midst of the joy of that Day a feeling had struck us that we only give articulation to now: what if they got to be too much? Would they crowd each other out? They have been given a divine command to reproduce. How will they know when to stop? They have been created as engines to be moving ever forward. Who will shift the gears, or disengage the transmission at the appropriate times? Who will bring order to the growth, form to the explosive abundance?

Clearly, since the Animals have been given a mission and a task to accomplish, the dominion over them which the God-character gives to the Humans cannot be meant to thwart that mission. Rather, it must be to further it, to channel it, to guide it, to in-form it. But how?

Drawing from our own experience, we identify five ways in which Humans have tried to bring order to the ongoing mission-oriented activity of Animals:

(1) Hunting to manage population size.
(2) Sterilization to manage population size.
(3) Breeding for improved utility or appeal.
(4) Taming for company and utility.
(5) Training for utility, entertainment, and improvement.

The first two of these seem disjointed with the Story we are reading. The story seems to be driving onward and upward, whereas (1) and (2) seem to be ways of “cutting back.” This is not to say these two ways don’t make sense. But somehow we are missing something that would introduce them into the world that the Story describes. There does not yet seem to be a place for them, though we might find one as the Story continues.

Option (3) seems more consonant with the Story’s use of Dividing as a primary means of bringing Form. In breeding, a new species or sub-species (depending on who we ask) is “split off” from the “main branch.” Instead of having Dogs pure and simple, we produce different kinds of Dogs.

As we think this last sentence, we are intrigued by the fact that the word “kind” came up, given that all the Animals have been made to reproduce “after their kind.” Though we would say there are different “kinds” of Dogs and Birds and Lizards, we wonder whether the Author of the Story would agree. After all, that the Animals recreate themselves after their kind does not seem to be a command so much as a description of how they are. To reproduce after your kind is simply part of what it means to be an Animal.

The Author, then, must have seen the various “species” of Animal as having introduced variety and multiplicity into their “kind.” It is fascinating to glimpse other (and perhaps ancient) ways of looking at the world, especially when they can still make sense to us. One experiences both adventure and connection.

While we have no idea whether any of the five options above are what the Author has in mind when God gives the Humans dominion over the Animals, we wonder whether the last one might not be the most applicable. This is not to say that the training of Animals that is carried out today is exactly what the Author had in mind, but we find this somehow the most consonant with the Story. It takes us a few moments, but we finally realize why.

Philosophers have, for the longest time, been very concerned about the difference between Humans and Animals. Some are concerned about it because they find it dangerous to see Animals as subhuman. This leads to cruelty, they think. Others are concerned about it because they are afraid that if the line between Humans and Animals becomes blurred, then Humans will begin to treat each other like Animals.

For thousands of years, then, philosophers have been struggling to find a way to prove either that Humans and Animals are fundamentally the same, or that they are fundamentally different. Usually it comes down to an argument over what set of properties or qualities Humans have, and whether or not (some) Animals have the same set. The “property” most often appealed to by philosophers to establish the difference between Humans and Animals is “thought.” Humans have it, and Animals don’t, they say.

If Humans have Thought and animals don’t, then Humans are thinking things and Animals aren’t. That means that Humans deserve a level of respect beyond what Animals deserve. And that makes it wrong to do experiments on other Humans, it makes it wrong to sterilize them or hunt them, etc.

(Philosophers who believe that the difference between Humans and Animals is “thought” don’t necessarily also believe it is okay to do those things to Animals. It just means that they have a way of arguing with people that, even if such things as hunting and breeding are okay to do with Animals, that doesn’t mean they are okay to do on Humans.)

But every time someone comes up with a definition of what makes Humans different than Animals, a new argument breaks out about that definition. What does “thought” mean? The ability to solve problems? Then why doesn’t a Rat’s ability to navigate a maze constitute thought?

Some people, then, say that it is not just any kind of thought, but high-level thinking, or rationality that is the difference between humans and animals. Others say that it is linguistic thought that is the difference.

It seems, however, that for every new definition of the difference, scientists can train Animals to act Human and thereby blur the distinction. Animals can be taught to count, to use tools, to use sign-language. The fact that they can do these things, some argue, shows that it is not the mere potential to act in typically-human ways that makes Humans different from Animals. At least some animals seem to have the “potential” to be raised toward (if not to) the Human level.

But might not this “raising up” of Animals be just what having dominion over them means? Might it not be what Yves Simone called “essential authority”:^* the Authority to coordinate and refine the activities of a group? We recall having read a story^** where the first Woman on an alien planet finds it her job to teach the Animals of her world till they became her equals. This is a kind of Rule meant to form and improve, and would continue our current Story’s overall line of growth.

Understanding the charge that is to be given to humanity by the God-character in this way leads to the following development: in the midst of the list of things over which Humans are to have authority is, “and over all the Earth.” It is slipped in as if the Author hopes it will be missed. But it is of immense importance, as it extends Human Dominion beyond the Living Realm to the Earth as a whole.

What is especially striking about this addition is that we had assumed the formation of the Earth was finished, and only the formation of the Living World that was left. But this surprise brings to light a structure which had not been entirely clear before:

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Eighteen ]}

____________________________________________________

^{* Yves Simon, A General Theory of Authority}
^{** C.S. Lewis, Perelandra}

^{[ Scripture quotation: Genesis 1:26, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Nineteen

First God creates, then God forms what was Created.

Looking back over the Six Days we see the following:

(1) God creates the Earth, but as empty and void, then sets about to Form it over the next Five Days. First, God gives it a location by separating it out of the Waters through the insertion of Heaven into their midst. Then God gives form to the newly defined Earth by separating its surface into Sea and Land.

(2) God creates Light and then, Days later, gathers it into the individual Lights (Sun, Moon, and Stars).

(3) The separation of Light from Darkness creates Day and Night, which are then, Days later, put by the Lights into larger structures of seasons and years.

(4) The Lights themselves are first created, and then placed in Heaven (in patterned constellations, we assume).

And as we have discussed before, once God has formed the Earth and Heaven, God fills them. So, God’s general activity follows the pattern: Create-Form-Fill.

But throughout God’s activity, there is a responsibility transfer occurring. First, God creates (Heaven, Earth, Sea, and Light), then begins to transfer that responsibility to the Earth (in producing the Plants), then to the Plants (in producing their offspring), then to the Sea (in producing both aquatic and avian life), to the Earth again (in producing land life), and finally to the Animals (in producing their offspring).

The responsibility to form Time was first exercised by God in the separation of Light and Darkness, but then turned over to the Rule of Sun and Moon. The responsibility to fill was first exercised by God in creating Plants, Animals, and Lights, but then is turned over to the Plants and Animals who must “be fruitful and multiply.”

Now God is transferring “dominion” to Humanity and this Dominion extends both over the Physical and Living World. The Living World cannot be created by Humans, as it already exists. And it cannot be filled by Humans, as it simply consists of Animals and Plants. So the only responsibility that God could transfer to the Humans under the title “dominion” is the job of forming the Living World.

But the Dominion given Humans over the Physical World can extend both to forming and filling. They, after all, have the power to reproduce just like the Animals do. But what could it mean to form the Earth? Perhaps landscapers and strip-miners would have some idea. Perhaps dam-builders and gardeners would have some idea. Perhaps irrigators and those who chisel dwellings out of cliffs would as well.

The question is how this power to Form is to be exercised. We think some might be afraid of this power and that makes us curious about both its proper use and whether we have understood it correctly.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Nineteen ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Twenty

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

As we would expect the “Let there be” section is followed by an “And God made” section. But this section actually contains three “And God made’s.” Surely, we think, this heralds the completion of the Story. We must have reached the climax, as it were.

This is the first time in the Story that sexual formation is mentioned explicitly. While all the other references to Plant and Animal life implied it, it is only here that it comes to the fore. It is, perhaps, the Author’s way of mirroring the fact that the other forms of life have all (but the fowl) come in at least two varieties. Plants had three, Sea Creatures two, Land Animals three, and now humans have two: the Male and the Female.

From this reference to the Male and Female, we see that in the previous sentences the word “man” was used in the sense of the species, not in the individual sense. And that means, we realize, that the Author of this story is taking sides in the ancient debate about how and whether Humans and Animals differ. Humans are not listed as a variety of Land Animal along with the other three. They are singled out for special Creation.

If the Author is siding with those who say that Humans and Animals are different, what might be the “property” that Humans have and Animals lack? Was there anything different about the Human Creating section and the Animal Creating sections?

The answer is yes, there was a difference. Humans are not simply created, but created as images. They are, as it were, not their own. They are (pictures) “of” the Divine.

The Author of this story has taken sides in a strange way. In fact, the Author may have taken sides in a way that alienates both camps. The difference between Humans and Animals is not specified in terms of a property that Humans have and Animals lack. Rather, it is specified through what humans are and animals (by implication) are not.

Or perhaps it would be better to say that Humans, as representations (images) of God, are different from Animals because of something they do. Humans re-present God to the world. They make God present to it.

This, then, must be why the Author tells us that God gave Humans Dominion over the rest of Creation. This is a simple consequence of the fact that God has made Humans images of God. Humans are to present God to the world, and thus God’s authority and power.

We had considered this before, but only now does the full import of this dawn upon us. The Author sees humans as God’s emissaries, as those who are to act for God, and thereby allow God to act in the world. By their very natures they are responsible for the world and to God.

The Author sees God as giving Humans the role of representatives, but the role comes with conditions. While someone exercising the Power of Attorney may be a representative with full license to do whatever he wishes with the assets of the person he represents, an image does not function in this way. An image is not an image if it does not present that which it is of; and it can only present that which it is of by being like it. A metal spoon cannot be the image of a symphony; the two are nothing alike. And a picture that is distorted beyond recognition ceases to be a picture of its subject.

Thus, the Author presents Humans as limited in the ways they may exercise their Dominion to those in which God would exercise that Dominion “Themself.” The moment a Human ceases to image God, that Human would no longer be what he was made to be. That is, to not act like God acts is to not be Human in this Story.

Another way to state the difference that the Author sees between Humans and Animals is to say that Humans have relational natures, while Animals do not. That is, what a Human is is a being-with-a-relation-to-God. That relation is one of imaging, or representing. Animals are what they are in and of themselves. Humans are what they are only in reference to God.

Looking over the sentence once more, we realize that one thing is missing. There is no “And it was so.” There is a “Let there be” and an “And God Made” (repeated thrice). We can only assume, therefore, that there was no need for an “And it was so.” Saying that God made humans, then saying it again, and then again, must have been enough for the Author.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth.

Just as on the Fifth Day, the Sixth ends with a Provision of Purpose in the form of a Blessing. And once again the Blessing is a command. In it, the humans are ordered to fill, subdue, and have dominion. Whereas before the human “Rule” over the Earth was lumped in with the “Dominion” over Animals, it is now singled out and named “Subduing.” This is a fascinating word-choice as it puts us in mind of the “taming” option we listed for the forming of the Animal Kingdom. But it also echoes the “training” option, since training an animal is what the philosophers would call “subduing the animal so that it cooperates with the rational.”

Philosophers have historically been insistent on training their passions to motivate their rational decisions. Thus in training an Animal, we teach it either to obey our (hopefully!) reasonable commands or to exercise its own automatic desires only in consort with its rationality. To subdue the animal is, therefore, to raise it to a higher level of activity by helping it to integrate and develop both its instincts and its mind.

Before moving on to the next sentence we cannot help but notice that here, the Land Animals are, for the first time, included among the beings that “move.” They join a grand company that includes the Spirit (or wind/breath) of God, and the Sea Creatures. We wonder if the Humans will be “moving creatures” as well.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Twenty ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Twenty-One

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the Earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

This new phase in God’s speech leads us to realize that language is important for these new Creatures. God has chosen to go beyond blessing things with speech (which does not require that the thing blessed understand Language), and to engage in linguistic interaction. This requires that the hearers comprehend. They are, after all, being directed to where they will be able to find food.

Thus, for the first time in the Story, God is explicitly talking to a part of Creation that can join in the conversation. Before engaging the humans, as best we can tell, God has been talking to God.

Beyond bringing to light the Language abilities of the humans to whom God speaks, what God says seems important on several levels.

First, we notice that God begins this part of the oration with, “Behold.” We cannot help but think this is meant to mirror the many other times in which the Author has informed us that God saw something was good. In this Story, apparently, God thinks the Humans will not recognize goodness when they see it, and therefore has to point it out to them.

We find the idea amusing at first, but then realize the situation the Author is describing. Here we have people who have suddenly come into being and are being talked to by a god. They have no parents, no schooling, no notion of meals, hygiene, etc. Philosophers have often distinguished between Humans and Animals by pointing out the great lack of guiding instincts in Humans. Animals don’t seem to have to learn the fundamentals so much as they need to practice them. Many of them come out of the womb and are running within minutes.

But the distinction between God and Humans on issues of seeing goodness is important for more than just practical reasons. For Humans to truly be images of God they will have to learn to see as God sees, to see good where God sees it. Like the Earth as a whole, therefore, humans have been created and now must be formed and filled. They must be trained and equipped. Things in this Story always have an instantaneous beginning, but an extended development.

In pointing out the foods that will be good for the humans, God identifies two of the three kinds of Plants: herbs and fruit trees. The grasses, we assume, will be left to the cattle. The way the herbs are described echoes the First Day: there Darkness and the Spirit of God were “upon the face of the waters”; here the herbs are “upon the face of all the Earth.”

As we noted before, this provision of food over the entire expanse of the Earth connotes maximal freedom. Humans are free from the Earth regarding issues of procreation, and not rooted to any one spot regarding issues of sustenance. God not only points out what is to be used for food, but that this food extends the world over; there is no need to pack for the journey.

From our current standpoint, we find it notable that only Plants are indicated as edible. Only plants are given as food. The Humans in this story are vegans!

This fact informs our earlier discussion of how Humans are meant to “bring form” to the Animal Kingdom. It would seem that the Author did not have hunting in mind when describing human Dominion. Understanding this underscores our earlier claims that the Story is one of continual growth, and that Plants are not considered a form of “life.” That is, if the Dominion over Animals is anything, it must lead to their improvement, not their death. And if death is antithetical to the line of the Story, then the use of Plants for food must not constitute death. This is entirely consonant with the fact that only Animals are described as having life in the Story.

All of this is a bit jarring for us. The story we had always been told about the first humans was that they were “hunter-gatherers.” The Author of our current Story writes only of gatherers, and gatherers that had to be taught what to gather by a god. This makes us wonder whether the Author thinks killing animals is wrong, despite the clear difference drawn in the Story between Humans and Animals. That is, we wonder how the people in the Author’s world would first begin to eat Animals. Would it be portrayed as part of the divinely instigated development of Humanity, or as some kind of mistake?

And to every beast of the Earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the Earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

We have begun to enjoy the quirks of this story, and this sentence has plenty.

First, it appears to be a primal version of the pet owner’s manual. Not only does God tell the humans what is good (to eat), but what the animals should be eating as well. But, strangely enough, both Cattle and Sea Creatures are left off the list. Obviously, Cattle would eat Grass, and the focus here seems to be on Herbs. But if Humans were given both Herbs and Fruit Trees, why not throw in the Cattle and their Grass?

As for the Sea Creatures, we are not entirely surprised that they are not given any of the three kinds of Land Plants. The inaccessibility of a food supply greatly hinders its consumption.

Rather than an owner’s manual for the Animals, however, we begin to suspect that God is here pointing out the Animals with whom the Humans will be sharing their food. Since the Cattle will be eating Grass, and Humans will not, there is no need to mention them. The same goes for the Sea Creatures. What is curious, however, is that the Fruit Trees seem to be left to Humans alone. We ponder this for a while but can make nothing of it. There is a mystery for another time.

What will not wait, however, is the presence here of the previously missing phrase, “And it was so.” This belongs with the Creating section of the Day, not with the Provision of Purpose! It is as if the Author does not consider the Humans fully created until they have been blessed, given a job, and informed about what is good for food and with whom they will be sharing. If so, then the Creation of humans is truly unique among the creation of all the other parts of the Universe. They seem to require much more to become what they are.

If the placement of, “and it was so,” here signals the completion of the creation of Humans, we wonder where their formation will begin. After all, we have found that everything God creates must later be formed. The formation of the Animals and Plants has been assigned to the Humans, but to whom is the formation of Humanity assigned?

There seem only two possibilities: God, or each other.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Twenty-One ]}

____________________________________________________

[ Scripture quotations: Genesis 1:29-30, KJV ]

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

____________________________________________________

Part I.Twenty-Two

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Even with all the time spent on the creation of humans, they do not get their own declaration of goodness. This is where it should fall in the structure of the Day, but instead we find a general declaration. Rather than looking at humans alone, God sees good everywhere. And what more appropriate way to bring the Story to completion than the insertion of the word “very”? We can sense God’s satisfaction in Creation through the page.

Especially pleasant, we think, is the Author’s use of the word “behold” here. For, to whom is it addressed? Surely to the reader. The Author is saying that the world God saw as very good is the world we can likewise behold, even if our attention has to be drawn to it. And perhaps it is good that the Author draws out attention to it, because we do not feel like one of those who see it automatically.

But this behold must also be a reminder, we think. The last behold before it was directed to the Humans in the story. This behold is directed to us, the Readers. Do we still have to be told what is good? Are we still so unfamiliar with good that it must be pointed out to us? Was this an ability that Humanity never developed? Is this ability to see good part of the formation of Humanity that is still left to accomplish?

With this one word we see the Author turn to us and say, Yes, it was you and your world I have been describing all along. We cannot escape the Story. We not only read it, but here at the end it speaks to us.

And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

As well they should be.

Having reached the end of the page we find it appropriate to rest our eyes. We lean back and relax. The Six Days flash before us in pictures mimicking the cover illustration, which we realize is now complete. We see birds and stars, trees and oceans, grass and animals we cannot name. We do not see God, though. We see humans trying to make God present. We cannot tell if they are succeeding.

Opening our eyes we glance back at the book, thinking we should shut it. Such a story should not be left exposed to the elements of dust and sunlight. As we reach for it, though, we notice that there are several pages below the one we had just finished. Is there some kind of epilogue?

Rather than close the book, we turn the page and find the following:

Thus the Heavens and the Earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

Creation is now completed and populated, and therefore God can stop working. And what is this? The Seventh Day is blessed. This is the first time we’ve seen a Day blessed rather than what was created on a Day.

We begin to wonder. The Lights were for seasons and years. The Moon presumably was for months. Is the Story for weeks? Or rather, has God been establishing a time structure all along? We had assumed that God had turned over the structuring of Time to the Lights, but it seems that God kept back some of that responsibility.

And what a marvelous Story for the origin of the Week! What we are told is that the Week is determined by the Creator, not the Creation. It is not determined naturally but supernaturally.

This makes us wonder: if the Seventh Day is blessed, and every week has a Seventh Day, does the blessing repeat as well? Is it that God has set the wheel of Weeks going, attaching a blessing to it, and has sent it off into the future? If so then the blessing is always coming, as the Seventh Day rolls towards us from the future.

The story ends with a past blessing that comes from tomorrow. Perhaps?

Just like the Sixth Day, God’s activity is repeated thrice. But this Day the activity is not creating Humanity but ceasing to work altogether. Thus for two Days in a row we have had a triple-repetition. We wonder if there is significance to this.

Despite the absence of the Creation element for the Seventh Day, the Blessing element is present. By now blessing has been fully separated from both command and Provision of Purpose. Here it is a blessing pure and simple. But it is a blessing doubled, for it is not only blessing but sanctification. The Author is fond of repetition to the end.

But is this an end?

Where is the “And the evening and the morning were the seventh day?”

This is the first Day on which the activity associated with the day is clearly stated to fall on the day. But this is also the first Day which the Story does not bring to an end! Surely the Author did not forget.

God rested on the Seventh Day. But Humans must not have ceased to be images on that day. Though God ceased to work, the Humans must have been presenting God to the world through what they are and did. Is this not the final transfer of responsibility from Creator to Creation? Is it not the signal, “Your turn!”

But if the Story does not end the Seventh Day, does it continue? Are we still in it? Is God still resting, and we still imaging? Is the responsibility yet fully in our hands?

We have never heard a story like this.

^{[ Click here to comment on Part I.Twenty-Two ]}

____________________________________________________

^{[ Scripture quotations: Genesis 1:31-2:3, KJV ]}

^{[ Intro | I:Intro | I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | I.4 | I.5 | I.6 | I.7 | I.8 | I.9 | I.10 | I.11 | I.12 | I.13 | I.14 | I.15 | I.16 | I.17 | I.18 | I.19 | I.20 | I.21 | I.22 ]}

The First Story: Part I

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Blogroll

Archives