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Week 3 Genesis to Jesus – The son who falls

Part 1 – We Need to Read It Like the Ancients

As we moderns read the creation story in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we tend to try and read it as a scientific book. But to the ancient Hebrews it was never a scientific book, modern science was not invented yet, it was instead a spiritual book telling the story of our salvation from the very beginning of time. We need to read it in the ancient Hebrew tradition, and in Genesis, chapter 1 we read that the earth was formless and empty, the Hebrew words tahu and wabahu. God takes care of formlessness and emptiness in the first triad of days, by creating day and night, that’s time, and then the sea and the skies, that’s space, and then finally land and vegetation, and that is life. These are all the things that allow life to exist on this planet. In the second triad of days, 4, 5, and 6, God creates the rulers over all that He has created in the first three days, over day and night is the sun, moon, and stars. Next, we see the birds and the fish over the sky and the seas, and finally the rulers of life on earth, the land and vegetation, are the animals and man. And then God rested on the seventh day, the climax of His creation, a day of rest, not because He was tired, but because it was complete, it was very good and nothing more needed to be done.

Later on we read in Exodus 31 more about the 7th day, the Sabbath, we find it was the sign of the blood covenant with Moses and all those he led out of Egypt. They built the tabernacle in six days, so they could celebrate and consecrate it on its completion on the seventh day.

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Pay close attention to the Biblical progression going on here, it is interesting that we find in 1 Kings, chapters 1-10 Solomon’s temple being built not in 40 or 50 years, but instead in six years, completing in the seventh month of the seventh year, on the seventh liturgical feast that lasted seven days. We clearly see the ancients did not see this creation story in terms of clock time, or a scientific process to prove something, they instead saw it as God creating a tabernacle, and then a temple as a kind of miniature cosmos, and they saw that God had built into the cosmos a temple, a holy place, for His creatures to live. Adam and Eve were not just living in a pretty garden, this was the Holy of Holies of God’s cosmic temple. The Bible speaks of the Garden of Eden having in it precious stones, fast forward and the priests serving in the temple wore precious stones on their chest representing God’s people. Adam is described as tilling and keeping the garden, the Hebrew words abodar and shamar literally mean to guard and to minister.

Those same words in the Old Testament are only found one other place in the Torah describing the Levite priests ministering in the tabernacle of Moses and later in the temple of Solomon. Adam was doing the work of a priest in the cosmic Holy of Holies in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden cherubim are posted with flaming swords to guard the temple as they left. The only other time we see the Bible speaking of cherubim is in the Holy of Holies

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in the temple of Jerusalem. The comparison cannot be any clearer. So... the ancients saw Genesis 1 as God creating His cosmic temple, planet earth, and in Genesis 2, God placing man and woman in the Holy of Holies of His cosmic temple. They would have understood that when Adam sinned, it was not just man turning his back on God, but they saw it as the first priest desecrating the Holy of Holies, no question they had to be banished for that very reason. Jewish teachers of the Torah would have seen the first several chapters of Genesis as blood covenant, and family, sacred ground, and not a book trying to prove Darwin wrong.

Creation is discussed in great detail in the CCC 282-412. Here is a sample.

282 Catechesis on creation is of major importance. It concerns the very foundations of human and Christian life: for it makes explicit the response of the Christian faith to the basic question that men of all times have asked themselves: “Where do we come from?” “Where are we going?” “What is our origin?” “What is our end?” “Where does everything that exists come from and where is it going?” The two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end, are inseparable. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions. (1730)

283 The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. With Solomon they can say: “It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements … for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.” (159; 341)

284 The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin: is the universe governed by chance, blind fate, anonymous necessity, or by a transcendent, intelligent and good Being called “God”? And if the world does

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come from God’s wisdom and goodness, why is there evil? Where does it come from? Who is responsible for it? Is there any liberation from it?

285 Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watchmaker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human. (295; 28)

286 Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason, even if this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error. This is why faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of this truth: “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.”123 (32; 37)

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287 The truth about creation is so important for all of human life that God in his tenderness wanted to reveal to his People everything that is salutary to know on the subject. Beyond the natural knowledge that every man can have of the Creator, God progressively revealed to Israel the mystery of creation. He who chose the patriarchs, who brought Israel out of Egypt, and who by choosing Israel created and formed it, this same God reveals himself as the One to whom belong all the peoples of the earth, and the whole earth itself; he is the One who alone “made heaven and earth.”125 (107)

288 Thus the revelation of creation is inseparable from the revelation and forging of the covenant of the one God with his People. Creation is revealed as the first step toward this covenant, the first and universal witness to God’s all-powerful love. And so, the truth of creation is also expressed with growing vigor in the message of the prophets, the prayer of the psalms and the liturgy, and in the wisdom sayings of the Chosen People.127 (280, 2569)

289 Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation—its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation. Read in the light of Christ, within the unity of Sacred Scripture and in the living Tradition of the Church, these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries of the “beginning”: creation, fall, and promise of salvation. (390; 111)

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II. Creation—Work of the Holy Trinity

290 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”: three things are affirmed in these first words of Scripture: the eternal God gave a beginning to all that exists outside of himself; he alone is Creator (the verb “create”—Hebrew bara—always has God for its subject). The totality of what exists (expressed by the formula “the heavens and the earth”) depends on the One who gives it being. (326)

291 “In the beginning was the Word … and the Word was God … all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The New Testament reveals that God created everything by the eternal Word, his beloved Son. In him “all things were created, in heaven and on earth … all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”130 The Church’s faith likewise confesses the creative action of the Holy Spirit, the “giver of life,” “the Creator Spirit” (“Veni, Creator Spiritus”), the “source of every good.” (241; 331; 703)

292 The Old Testament suggests and the New Covenant reveals the creative action of the Son and the Spirit, inseparably one with that of the Father. This creative cooperation is clearly affirmed in the Church’s rule of faith: “There exists but one God … he is the Father, God, the Creator, the author, the giver of order. He made all things by himself, that is, by his Word and by his Wisdom,” “by the Son and the Spirit” who, so to speak, are “his hands.” Creation is the common work of the Holy Trinity. (699; 257)

III. “The World Was Created for the Glory of God”

293 Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: “The world was made for the glory of God.” St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things “not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it,”135 for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: “Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand.” The First Vatican Council explains: (337, 344; 1361; 759) This one, true God, of his own goodness and “almighty power,” not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the

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benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel “and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal.…”

294 The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us “to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace,” for “the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man’s life is the vision of God: if God’s revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word’s manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.”139 The ultimate purpose of creation is that God “who is the creator of all things may at last become ‘all in all,’ thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude.” (2809; 1722; 1992) Catholic Church. (1997). Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed., pp. 73–77). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Now let’s go back and read about the creation of man, Genesis 1:26–28 (RSV2CE) 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have

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dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

When Genesis was written they did not have a whole body of study called philosophy, today we look at this passage and break it down in terms intellect and will, both operate as functions of our souls. The intellect gives us the power to know something, and the will gives us the ability to make a choice based on knowledge we know and get something done. That is the modern way of looking at man being made in the image and likeness of God. The ancients saw this in a much simpler context, but probably more profound that our modern thinking. They would have seen man made in the image of God as the mystery of male and female becoming one and being endowed with the ability to create a third person. They saw God and creator and wondered what He meant by saying. Let “us” make man in “our” image, male and female. They saw God as an image maker, making images in His likeness.

Adam and Eve were participating in the essence of God, not even knowing that they were the first son and daughter of God, but they knew they were empowered to make an image in their own likeness, and the child was also in the likeness of God. We look back from our time and clearly see the Trinity in the hints and shadows of sacred scripture from the first book of the Bible. However, we need to remember that Trinity, or God in three persons, was not known in ancient times up until the incarnation of Jesus. The mystery of the two becoming one in the marital covenant is so powerful, that they must name the result of their oneness 9 months later. The math here is a divine mystery, the two become one, and several months later they become three in one. The covenant family is the very image of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Genesis 5:1–3 (RSV2CE) 1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.