Creation Stories and Genesis

Anybody who does not have a religious background and who picks up the book of Genesis could be forgiven for being confused about the contradictions in it and for questioning how that text could be so seriously regarded as an article of religious faith. It is not enough to suggest that the creation stories of Genesis have a metaphorical and not literal character, although Mann comments (14) that the author of Genesis 1 "is interested in the artistry of the created order, not in paleontology." To be sure, that much may be discerned from the use of the word day to describe the span of time God used to accomplish the building of the cosmos. Furthermore, as Vawter notes, quoting a 1948 Biblical Commission, the purpose of Genesis was to:

relate in simple and figurative language, adapted to the understanding of a less developed people, the fundamental truths underlying the divine plan of salvation, as well as the popular description of the origin of the human race and of the chosen people (Vawter 32).

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as commanded by the power of God (14). The stress on "harmony with the will and commands of God . . . form[s] a nucleus of themes and motifs which continue . . . into the rest of the Hebrew Bible" (1). In other words, the creation confers a certain moral content on the cosmos because of the investment of the Creator in its attributes. That is reinforced at Gen. 1.10, 1.18, 1.21, and 1.25 by the phrase that "God saw that it [that is, the Creation artifact] was good." It is consistent, too, with what could be called the priestly context, which connotes acquiescence in religious authority of which the priestly class would have been the chief representative. Campbell's view of the priestly, or "P," text, is that the source of creation is the "power of the word [of God], which in primitive thought is far from 'nothing,' but on the contrary, is the essence of its thing" (112). That is not inconsistent with Mann's idea of cosmic order as proceeding from divine command (after all a set of words) and may even be a distinction without a difference. However, Campbell does not pursue the question of the "goodness" of the Creation; he is more struck by the patent illogic in the fact that a story in which man was created after the animals (Gen
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Approximate Word count = 2466
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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