Bible Study or In the Beginning God Created...what out of what?

Kids,

First, sorry that I'm late on this. I know I told the Boo that I'd get this done by yesterday, but I was gone from church to 11:30 and so I just crashed when I got in.

Apologies aside, here's the first installment of the Wilkins version of a Biblical Literacy class. The rules are simple, we'll go (roughly) Sunday to Sunday, one chapter a week. I'll start today, The Boo will follow, and Jack'll go last. Unless you guys want to switch, but it really shouldn't matter. You can work it out. The idea is that the person leading will carefully read the chapter, and then post about...well anything that (s)he wants to related to the scripture. The purpose is to read it much as if we never had, so try hard to ditch the preconceptions we have. Ok, obviously that's an impossible goal. I guess what I mean is, pay special attention to those throw away verses that we tend to skip when we read alone, because well, they don't make that much sense or they don't fit in with the way we've been taught our whole lives. Obviously, to a great extent, any opinions or judgments we are going to be making will stem from they way we've been raised and what we honestly believe. But we shouldn't let that stop us from really engaging with whatever the text actually says.

It is the responsibility of those not blogging that week to comment. You must read the passage yourself, and comment either on the blogger's (let's call ourselves writers, or corresponders, or something...I hate blogger) observations, or to add your own. And of course feel free to respond back and forth as much as you like. To those who may be reading this and are not Jack, Warnie, or a Boo, feel free to comment as well. Only you won't get front and center attention. Because we're cooler and more important than you.

Oh one more thing. I don't know about you guys, but I'll be reading the NIV. It might be useful for us all to use the same version, but if you use something else, just note it in your opening entry so we can find the version you read. I'm pretty sure most versions can be found for free online.

So, without further ado, here goes.
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I think it's interesting that the early modern bible compilers, who added Chapter and Verse, thought it necessary to cut the first chapter after 6 days, leaving the 7th to the second chapter, and, for us, next week. I wonder if they wanted to emphasize that 7th day, or the first 6?

But going through it, the first thing I am really struck by is, of course, the poetry of it. It is even laid out, at least in my bible, in poetical form. There seems little doubt to me that this was simply intended, from the very beginning, to be a story, a mythology if you will - though that work carries baggage that maybe should be avoided - explaining truth rather than being full of facts. There are a number of truths that it expounds in a very beautiful way. The largest of course being that God created the heavens and the earth. I'm probably putting my liberal public school biases into this, but it seems to me that it doesn't really matter how he made it so much as it matters that he did. For which, I am eternally grateful.

The chapter also suggests that the creation of the world was something difficult, and something that God didn't just do all at once. That's comforting as well in several ways. It's comforting to think that God took his time. Even if he were capable of doing it perfectly all at once, he chose not to, but to divide his time and get it just right. After all, isn't it a greater miracle to see his plan come to fruition over hundreds of thousands of years? Or frankly, even 6 days. It's nice to think that he loved his creation so much that even though he had the capability to do a perfect rush job, he chose not to. And it also shows his human side from the start. From the very first chapter we see that God worked and not only that, he took time to stand back and examine his handiwork, happy that it turned out. Which begs the question, could it have been bad? Would he have had to start over? Could he have sat back and said, "I can't get the FUCKING trees! I will kill everyone in the world! (that I haven't created yet). Maybe, maybe not. But it still gives a very human quality to God, which is nice to see in the beginning of the Bible, making the God of the Old not quite so different from the God of the New as it is easy to think at times.

A few specific observations: The NIV doesn't say the earth was void like I thought it would (I suppose its the James I'm getting that from) but rather "formless and empty, darkness was on the surface of the deep...". That's a little easier to picture. Void was a concept hard to grasp, since I would always picture it as kind of hazy clouds (like if you press on your eyes for a while you start to see these rolling shapes, kind of like clouds defined in lightning...do it you'll see what I'm talking about. Of course it's really just your eyes saying, hey stop pressing on me dumbass. One of these days I'll go blind! I'll do it! Anyway...) But I knew that wasn't VOID because void was nothing. This is more like an empty ocean in the dark. Which is easier to picture. Though it does make you wonder why we're jumping in after water's already been made. Then again, from a poetic perspective, what can you imagine that could be more empty than a dark sea, with nothing in sight? Not only empty, but lonely.

From a historical perspective the first chapter tells us a good deal about the writers, who of course weren't the originators, but it's harder to nail down what persisted from and what was added to the oral tradition. Still, the fact that the writer has the livestock created separately from the wild animals says that this is at least the birth of an agricultural civilization.

Finally, one important point that I noticed - the creation of man account is different from how I remembered it. Or actually not so different, but this time I noticed a slight problem that I didn't before. In a touching scene, set off from the rest of the text, God creates Man in his image - male and female. No ribs. And then the next verse: "God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it."

If I were a literalist I might think that God were giving an equal share of earth to both Man and Woman - both created in his image. Thank God I can interpret scripture to keep women making me sandwiches.

Last thing...after the 6th day, God saw all that he had made and it was very good. One thing to take from this - without a doubt, God delights in his creation, and especially in human beings - our lives, our stories, our hopes, and our dreams. From the start he is a loving creator - the deist clockmaker is hard to see from this passage.

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Next week: The Boo rocks Chapter 2. Something tells me we're going to get a break. (Haha. Day of rest, get it?)

PEACE OUT CRACKAHS!

Love,
Warnie