GENESIS: THE STORY OF
CREATION
World Literature I
Presentation by:
Ralph Monday
Creation Of Adam 1512
Michelangelo 1475-1564
Creation of Eve Michelangelo 1512
1475-1564
Adam and Eve
Marc Chagall 1912
Adam and Eve
Lucas Cranach the Elder 1531
Pre-Israelite History
• The first eleven chapters of Genesis
hint at the earliest ages of human life
and civilization (see Chapter 1). While
these chapters do not convey history
in a scientific sense, they do show
awareness of the momentous moves
to civilization attested in anthropology
and archaeology:
Genesis Authorship
• The book of Genesis was written by a
number of authors who assembled
material from three traditions:
• "J,” named for the Yahwist tradition
who referred to God as Yahweh
(translated "the Lord" in English).
• "E,” named for the Elohist tradition
who referred to God as Elohim,
which was derived from the name of
the Canaanite God El (translated as
"God" in English).
• "P,” named for the Priestly class who
were primarily concerned with history,
genealogies, etc.
• the first construction of cities, the
domestication of animals for human
use, the conflict between agriculture
and shepherding, the development of
bronze and iron tools, and the
invention of musical instruments and
the fine arts.
Ancestral Period (2000-1550
B.C.E.)
• No exact date for the period of
Israel's ancestors, the patriarchs and
matriarchs, can be determined.
• A widely-held guess is that Abraham
and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and
Jacob's family were of the Middle
Bronze age, thus living sometime
between 2000 and 1550 B.C.E.
• Historians have also placed them
both earlier and later than this.
Unfortunately, there is no external
evidence that can confirm the
existence of any of the ancestors.
• They exist for us only in the story in
the Bible.
• Almost everything we know of Israel's
ancestors comes from Genesis 12-50
(see Chapter 2), nothing from
Mesopotamia or Egypt.
Old Testament Covenant
• The God who was later identified as
the God of Israel encountered
Abraham and made a covenant with
him that included
• promises of future well-being,
including the inheritance of Canaan
as a family homeland and the growth
of the family into an international
empire.
William Blake
Elohim: Creating Adam
1795/c.1805
GENESIS
• The book of Genesis is the book of
origins. It begins by describing the
creation of the world, and along the
way it conveys basic features of the
Hebrew view of
• God, the universe, and humanity.
Genesis also accounts for the origin
of the nation of Israel by telling tales
of its ancestors.
• Genesis is such an important book that it
gets two chapters:
• Chapter 1. Genesis 1-11: the Primeval
Story and Chapter 2. Genesis 12-50: the
Ancestral Story.
Genesis: The Primeval Story
• The origin stories of Genesis 1-11 the
Primeval Story, referring to the
earliest ages of cultural development.
• The Primeval Story is a sweeping
account of the earliest events, from
the creation of the world to the
spread of humanity over the face of
the earth. But the writer only mentions
those seminal events that fit his
purpose.
• The primeval story is not history.
• The earliest events of creation had no
human eyewitnesses.
• Stories such as we find in the early
chapters of Genesis are mostly myths
and sagas.
• A literalistic approach to Genesis 1-11
would confuse history with myth and
reality with symbol.
• Applying such terms as "myth" to
Genesis in no way devalues or
demeans the stories.
• Indeed, a mythos communicates
powerful human “truths.”
A Creation Mythos
Spiral galaxy NGC 1232
• Deep human questions give rise to
creation myths:
• Who are we?
• How did we get here?
• What is the purpose of life?
Definition of Myth
• Myth is a culture’s means of
understanding fundamental realities.
• A myth is a traditional story of
supposedly real events that is told in
order to explain a culture's beliefs,
practices, institutions, or a
phenomenon of nature.
• Often myths are associated with
religious rituals or doctrines.
• Both ancient cultures and modern
ones have their particular myths.
• The cosmology of the "Big Bang" is a
contemporary myth that strives to
account for the universe.
• It remains a construct under frequent
revision, even though it is backed by
scientific evidence and reasoning.
Visual Metaphor for the Big Bang
Genesis: Two Accounts of Creation
• The book of Genesis contains two
accounts of the creation. The first
account comes out of the Priestly
document of the exilic period.
• The second account is earlier and
comes from the Yahwist narrative.
While the Yahwist creation and flood
stories deal primarily with the problem
of sin,
• the Priestly writer was intensely
concerned with the gift of divine
blessing expressed as the structure
and ground of all life.
Priestly Creation Story
(1:1-2:4a)
• The Priestly creation story opens with
an earth that was "shapeless and
void." This world was dominated by
vast depths of ominous and unruly
water.
• Into the watery wilderness God injected
his voice and created life, along with the
means to sustain it. First came light, then
the firmament to control the waters, then
land and vegetation to sustain life. In
succession God created birds, fish,
terrestrial animals, and human beings.
Separation of Land and Water
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
• The individual creative acts are
spread out over six days and
culminate with the creation of human
beings as the image of God.
• There is an order and a rhythm to the
creation, as the following table
demonstrates:
Table 1.1 Bilateral Symmetry of
Genesis 1
Day Environment Day Inhabitant
1 Light 4 Sun, Moon, Stars
2 Sky and Sea 5 Birds and Fish
3a Dry Land 6a Land animals
3b Vegetation 6b Humanity
“Let There Be Light”
Orion Nebula Mosaic
Yahwist Creation Story
(2:4b-3:24)
• In the Yahwist creation story, the
LORD God, YHWH Elohim in
Hebrew, created the shape of a man
out of clay and breathed life into him.
• The Yahwist story of creation is the
first episode of the Yahwist narrative.
Its stories of Genesis 1-11 establish
the basic plot of the Primeval Story.
• Important human questions are asked
in this section:
• Where did we come from?
• To whom are we accountable?
• Where did sin come from?
• Why do we have to die?
The Fall: Adam and Eve Tempted by
the Snake, by Hugo van der Goes
(1440-1482)
Adam and Eve, Albrecht Dürer
(1471-1528)
(1507)
Michelangelo
Original Sin
(1512)
The Triumph of Death
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569)
(1562)
Michelangelo Expulsion From Eden
(1509-10)
WAYNE SCHOENFELD
Expulsion From Eden
Contemporary artist
Works Cited
• Bandstra, Barry L. “Reading the Old Testament: An
Introduction to the Hebrew Bible.” Wadsworth
Publishing Company, 1999.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www
.hope.edu/academic/religion/bandstra/. 22 Sep. 2004.
• Conflicting Christian Views of the Bible’s Creation
Stories. Religious Tolerance.Org. http://www.
religioustolerance.org/ev_crest.htm. 22 Sep. 2004.