Thread by @JoelBaden

Starting a series of running notes on the #Pentateuch. Not a full commentary, just thoughts, mostly on issues of composition and translation of the #Bible.

Hope it's useful/interesting, and hoping for engagement: add'l insights from scholars, questions from anyone.

Enjoy!

#Genesis 1:1

My favorite example of the truism that translation is interpretation: the first three words of the Bible. Believe in creation ex nihilo? "In the beginning God created." Don't believe that? "When God began to create."

Which one is correct? Neither is decisively right, though the grammar leans slightly against the famous KJV wording. Elsewhere בראשית is in construct with the following word (Jer 26:1, e.g.); if here too, then it's "In the beginning of God's creating."

(It's okay for nouns to be in construct with verbs. Check out 2 Sam 22:1, ביום הציל יהוה, "On the day of YHWH's saving.)

This is, in any case, the beginning of the Priestly source of the Pentateuch. The idea of God as creator isn't unique to P (there's no other god in the Bible to whom creation is attributed). And this doesn't make P monotheistic. Lots of polytheistic folks had creation stories.

The P creation story isn't first in the Pentateuch because P was more important, or responsible for the editing of the text. It's first because the first word is "In the beginning." What else could possibly go before it?

Random note: the word ברא, "created," is only ever used of God. It would be useful to find a good English word for the specifically divine creative faculty. Maybe it's just "Create" with a capital C, which is how we distinguish between creation and Creation.

A final thought, for the moment: this verse is just the first subordinate clause of a much longer sentence. We don't hit the main clause until Gen 1:3. Everything up to then, including this, is just giving us the temporal frame for when God said "Let there be light."

(For the record, I'm not really planning to go through every verse like this. Sometimes I'll do a whole chapter in a day, when they're somewhat more boring. Plenty to say here, though.)

#Genesis 1:2

Let's start with syntax. This isn't an independent sentence; it's the continuation of the temporal clause from the previous verse. So: the earth was a chaotic watery mess *when God began to create heaven and earth.* Ex nihilo creation is in trouble here.

So too for the second and third clauses: at that time, it was dark, and a divine...something...was over the water. (For the "something," see more below.) This was the state of things pre-creation.

What existed before God began to create? Water and darkness, at least. The earth seems to have been inchoate, but not quite there yet. This is familiar territory: it's almost exactly how the classic Mesopotamian creation myth Enuma Elish presents the pre-creation world.

There too the text begins by noting that heaven and earth are pretty much voids, and only the Apsu and Tiamat, the primeval watery deities, existed, their waters mingling. Tiamat, of course, gives us the Hebrew תהום, "deep," in this verse and elsewhere.

There's really no question that the P creation story is dependent on the Mesopotamian one. But dependence doesn't mean direct literary, textual knowledge. P doesn't read (to me) as necessarily familiar with Enuma Elish in the written form that we now have it.

Genesis 1 just looks like the native Israelite version of an originally Mesopotamian creation story. There aren't as many deities (naturally enough). Nature itself isn't deified. That's not polemic against Mesopotamia; it's just what Israelites thought was the case.

(I'm not discounting the possibility of direct knowledge; but I am saying that I don't see nearly enough evidence to support it as definitively as many do. But I realize I'm relatively conservative on that front.)

Okay, for the semantics folks: what to do with "the רוח of God מרחפת above the waters"? It seems that the verb here, מרחפת, means to hover, as a bird does over its nest (see Deut 32:11). But is the רוח "spirit" or "wind"?

Everywhere else, רוח אלהים means the aspect of the deity that can settle on humans, whether as wisdom (Gen 41:38), craftsmanship (Exod 31:3), prophesy (Num 24:2), etc. (And sometimes it's a bad thing, as Saul discovered.)

But God certainly sends winds that relate to waters: to stop the flood (Gen 8:1), to affect the "Red" Sea (Exod 15:10), etc. And could אלהים here just be "mighty"?

Thoughts?

#Genesis 1:3-5

God said, Let there be light! The first main clause of the Bible (finally), for the first act of creation. Note that I don’t put “and” in front - that constant conjunction is a Bible-ism, a thing that is only done in Bible translation. It ain’t good English style.

It’s also not good Hebrew style, even: the waw that stands at the beginning of ויאמר, and a billion other verbs in Biblical Hebrew, is a necessary part of the verbal form, not the separate conjunction “and.” So we aren’t compelled to say “and” before every damn verb. We’re free!

Okay a grammar thing: it happens elsewhere, so it’s not “weird” per se, but if someone wants to explain the syntax of כי טוב, go for it. I think it acts like a second object of וירא - he saw the light, he saw that it was good - and we just put them together into one thought.

Now here’s the first act of separation, of light from dark. (Another reason I don’t think ברא means “separate” - there’s a perfectly good word for that, and P isn’t afraid to use it here.)

I think this is the only place in the Bible that בדל is used for temporal separation. Which makes me wonder whether they aren’t imagining light and dark as being more physically than temporally distinct.

The distribution of בדל is also interesting. A bunch of times in P, a handful in D, some second Isaiah, then Ezekiel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. That’s a lot of priestly (broadly speaking) material. The only exception is 1 Kgs 8:53, which is probably late too.

Last point: these verses are usually part of the argument for the Jewish day starting at sundown. Nonsense. The first day ends when the sun comes up (בקר). The evening to evening day is a later Jewish invention, not a biblical one.

P, in fact, gives the best evidence for this: leftover sacrificial meat (from the thanksgiving offering) must be consumed the day it is offered - it is off-limits once the following morning comes (Lev 7:15). The new day starts at dawn. Same in Genesis 1.

Thoughts?

#Genesis 1:6-8

Day 2: the firmament! Or whatever the hell a רקיע is. I know @eshetbaalathaov has thoughts...

In the meantime, these are the verses that contain the notion of the cosmos most different from later ones: that the inhabitable world exists in a bubble, basically, surrounded by water above and below.

The key, of course, is that the waters above stay up there. If they don’t, we get really wet. Like, flood wet. Which is just how P understands the flood: as the undoing of this separation (7:11). Whereas J thinks it’s just a lot of normal rain. (We’ll get there.)

Note that for P, the firmament isn’t just a membrane that keeps the water out. It’s what gets called שמים, heaven. Is this where YHWH lives? P never says so explicitly.

In P שמים is mentioned outside Gen 1 only in the flood, with reference to where the cosmic waters come from, where birds fly, and in the phrase “under the heavens”; the plagues, where Moses stretches his hand “toward the heavens”; and the reference to creation in Ex 31:17.

All of which is to say, it seems just as likely that in P YHWH doesn’t live in the heavens - that’s not really an inhabitable space - but outside the cosmic waters, which would seem to be the case according to Gen 1:2.

That makes YHWH’s eventual habitation in the earthly Tabernacle even more remarkable.

But I may be wrong...let’s have the true P experts weigh in.

#Genesis 1:9-13

The appearance of dry land (יבשה), or the part of the earth that isn’t water. It must have existed before creation, because it isn’t created here, just revealed.

In P, the word is used only twice (it’s not a very common word in any case): here and when the Israelites cross the “Red” Sea in Exodus 14. P uses the word to denote the dry land revealed by the removal of water. It’s what you can walk on, what things can grow on.

Everywhere it’s used, though, it is always contrastive with water one way or another. Which is why “dry land” is a good translation. (Also because the root, יבש, means “dry,” though we all know roots don’t determine translation.)

For the syntax nerds (I could have pointed this out on day one, but it’s just as good here): the use of the disjunctive clause for the naming of the seas, rather than a second wayyiqtol, suggests simultaneity rather than succession.

That is, God didn’t first call the dry land “earth,” then call the gathered waters “seas.” I translate this “He called the dry land earth, while the gathered waters he called seas.” In separating, the two are created at the same time, and they are named as a pair as well.

(I use this in class as a classic example of what disjunctive clauses can do, and the kinds of freedom they allow the author in Biblical Hebrew.)

Day three sees not only separation, but actual growth: all the vegetation emerges from the newly revealed earth. A key term here is “according to its kind,” למינו. P sets up categories of existence from the beginning, and guarantees their continuity into the future.

This is crucial, as for P the ability to identify species will come into play (for animals, at least) with the kosher laws in Lev 11. The word “kind,” מין, is used in P only here, for the animals brought on the ark in the flood, and in the kosher laws.

Actually, the word appears elsewhere in the Bible only in Deuteronomy’s kosher laws, in a three-verse section patently added later and copied verbatim from P, and in Ezekiel. In other words, it’s a P word, and perhaps even concept.

Thoughts?

What do other people find interesting in these verses?

#Genesis 1:14-19

Now it gets tricky. It’s easy enough to understand that there’s a difference between the existence of light and dark and the existence of the celestial bodies that we today recognize as being the sources of light. Modern scientific knowledge isn’t a problem.

Here’s my issues with this section: Why is the phrase רקיע השמים, “the firmament of heaven,” suddenly used here (and in 1:20 - and never again), when we were just told that the רקיע was named שמים?

The great lights are intended to separate, הבדיל, between day and night. Since God has already separated day and night, back on day one, how is the verb being understood here? To mark the separation? As the visible sign of the separation?

What I think we can say with some assurance: the need for a visible separation of day and night here in creation is a setup for the later calendrical needs of the priestly community. When offerings instantly become off limits the next day, you have to know when that is.

Similarly, the last clause of 1:14, even more explicitly: as signs for the years and months and, especially, the set times, מועדים, which is the priestly term for the festivals (Lev 23:2).

But: I happen to think that there are no festivals in P proper. Lev 23 is from H, Num 28-29 is later still, and there are no festivals mentioned in the original P layer, not even in the description of the שלמים sacrifices, where one might expect it.

So what does “set times” look ahead to here? It could just mean a generic fixed period, as it is actually used in P (Gen 17:21; 21:2). Is it possible, though, that this clause might be from H? Maybe even the whole verse? Also...

There are three roles, three verbs, attached to the great lights. In order: “to separate,” “to shine,” and “to rule.” But when God actually puts the lights up, the order is different: shine, rule, separate. As if maybe separation has been added at the front and back?

And in that second mention of separation, why is it now that the lights are separating not between day and night but between light and dark? After light is called “day,” P only uses the word again for the miraculous light in Israel’s tents during the plagues (Ex 10:23).

Same with “dark” - it is only used for the miraculous darkness of that same plague (Ex 10:21-22). Weird that they should be used here.

This all gives me pause, and make me suspect that the references to the celestial bodies marking off time, separating day from night, are potentially an H expansion here. But I’m not entirely convinced - it’s still marked as P in my text. Just thinking out loud.

On a non-controversial note, day four is the beginning of the process of filling the newly created spaces of creation, which happens in a neat parallel sequence. Days 1-3 make spaces; days 4-6 fill them. Here the temporal space of day/night is filled with sun, moon, and stars.

(For the uninitiated, H is the common scholarly designation for the main revisionary layer within the Priestly document, most famously in Lev 18-26, but found throughout P.)