b''h
So, here it is. We start the cycle anew. In the beginning, בראשית, bereshit. Is this a contradiction of the fundamentals of science or something else?
To the modern reader, the ancient and formulaic rhythm of the first chapter of Genesis seems only as worthy as any other myth. What privileges this creation story above the mythology of the Greeks, the Germanic myths, or the Egyptian?
After all, science proves the world was not created in six days. It is billions of years old, created in an explosion so big it still subtly heats the cosmos. The living species brought about each other through evolution, not the wave of a magic wand.
The application of critical studies to the Biblical text seems to deepen the hole in the story even further. The first 50 or so verses of Genesis are written by a different author than what follows. The style of God's name changes, as does the language. A human author wrote this text. A fallible human. And that human was wrong about the origins of the universe and of life.
Yes, it would seem that to the modern reader, the only thing that saves this text is its historical importance as a fundamental text of one major world religion (Christianity) and a couple of minor ones (Judaism and Samaritanism) and as a direct influence on another major world religion (Islam) and a few other minor ones, like the Druze.
And what does the modern reader see in these religions? The western reader, at least, easily separates the Christian ceremonial culture that most engage in, such as Christmas, Easter, Halloween and so on, from the religious subgroups that seem so retrograde and serve as such a reactionary force upon our culture. The difference between the ceremonial adherents of Christianity and the other group seems to be testable by whether they read and believe in this text, in Genesis.
So would we be better redacting this text and perhaps everything up to Lekh Lekha from the Bible, or perhaps even ignoring the Bible altogether? and leave it to the scholars of religion and the fundamentalists?
I would argue no.
In doing so, I will try to rehabilitate this text. I will not attempt to do so by showing it to contain some deep secret meaning or fantastical contents that show a divine fingerprint on the text. I will not do so by insisting that you take it literally. I will not ask you to accept Genesis as your biology or astronomy textbook. I will simply do so by asking you to accept this text for what it was, couched in its own time and place.
The "Priestly" author/redactor/editor/scribe, whom we shall call "P," of the beginning of Genesis probably lived in Mesopotamia during the First Exile or, at least, somewhere that experienced significant contact with Mesopotamian religion.
"P" was not writing this text out of whole cloth. "P" was writing a polemic by modifying a well known story, the "Enuma Elish." You may know that the story of Noah resembles the Mesopotamian myth contained in the epic of Gilgamesh. So the first words of Bereshit do too.
Contained in this account is a small Shema. Let me explain.
The Jewish telling of this story rejects polytheism. "P" goes so far as to avoid using Hebrew words for sun and moon that have a subtext as the names for Canaanite divinities and instead refers to them as "me'orot" or lamps/lights, the big "haggadol" and the small "haqqaton."
The only one doing anything here is 'elohim. Perhaps the strange reference to "us" and "our image" in 1:26 is a relic of the gods involved in the creation story of Enuma Elish, but the story itself rejects this. It asserts, in fact, that 'elohim made the mere things the others worship.
This affirmation of God's oneness—of the God we Jews worship, as opposed to you polytheistic Mesopotamians—is similar to the Shema prayer: [The proper name of God] is our God and [He] is One.
If the modern reader can take this story for the argument that it contains, as opposed to treating it as an alternative Cosmology and Biology textbook, you find in it the essence of Judaism!
But why is this important? What does monotheism mean?
First, it rejects the unscientific mythology of polytheism which is more or less anthropomorphizing physical forces people didn't understand and offering up all kinds of horrors in sacrifice to them on the theory that they acted as immorally as humans do to each other.
Well, leaning again on the historical importance of monotheism, we can certainly say that the concept was important in the history of the world. But if we already have that legacy given to us, why does it matter now?
It matters because it says something about morality. I know it's been fashionable for 300 years or more to deny that the state of the universe can say anything about morals—the pernicious "is/ought" gap.
Just within the physical realm for a moment, let me suggest that the universe is amazing. On the scale of the entire cosmos down to the subatomic level it is replete with wonder. Contemplating it is a very elevated form of spirituality. I find God in the ordering principle of the universe. Not as an "intelligent designer" or much less a bearded man in the sky. But what does this mean for what we should or shouldn't do?
Going back to the contrast with polytheism, it means for one thing not to attribute the faulty actions of humans to a higher power. Even many supposed monotheists fall into that trap. But it means at least that rules are universal. There aren't different rules for followers of Mars and followers of Hera.
These wonders of nature show us the way on so many things. Humans, in fact, evolved to cooperate. Our innate morality stems from our ability to work as a society, together, and reliably. Evolution as an excuse for cutting off the weaker among us is as much of a false idol as it is unscientific.
Even if you don't see God as existing in reality, the concept itself stands out from the text of Bereshit. And the concept is important to the establishment of the rule of law in ordered societies. If the modern reader can accept that, then Bereshit is relevant again in our struggle against selfish and antisocial political ideologies which have seriously poisoned our culture.
And let's not forget one smaller message in this text: each human is a divine image—a concept which works two ways, but in both directions tells us to respect life—life is, after all, the highest and most amazing expression of the cosmos (God, if you will) and its order, chaos, and complexity. This principle found an expression that made me very proud of the Jewish values of Israel this week with the release of Gilad Shalit, even at such a steep cost.
Israel has its flaws, but America could learn to see all of its people as such a close-knit family a little more. It might start by putting aside the pseudoscientific messages some see here and instead looking at the ethical message of Bereshit.
Chag Sameach Sukkot.