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O l d T e s t a m e n t G u i d e
GENESIS
By ANTONIO FUENTES
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This Rock
Volume 5, Number 4
 April 1994 
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The first book of the Pentateuch, Genesis,
gives an account of the origin of all created things and acts, as
it were, as an elaborate introduction to God's later revelation to
Israel through Moses. It summarizes the early stages in the history
of mankind from the creation to the death of Joseph the patriarch.
Unlike the book of Exodus, which follows it and in which the history
of Israel as a people begins, Genesis contains the history of Israel's
ancestors, the greatpatriarchs--Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, Joseph--and therefore is the history of a family, Abraham's,
from which the chosen people stemmed. Before concentrating on this
family, in order to explain its background, the first eleven chapters
deal with the history of the world and of man, the history of civilization
and culture, tracing the early outlines of God's plan of salvation
and the role Israel is to play in it.
These early chapters, written in popular language, rich in imagery,
provide answers to the kind of questions every human being, in any
age, is inclined to ask: Who made me? Where does the world come from?
What is life all about? What is the meaning of suffering, sickness,
and death? What explanation is there for war and human strife? Man
wants answers to these questions. He wants to know how he can re-establish
peace, how and by whom can he be restored to spiritual health. He
realizes his limitations and those of others,and
yet in the depths of his soul he feels an infinite capacity for peace
and happiness which no one and nothing on earth can satisfy.
Opening the Bible and reading these first chapters is like having
a huge family album, full of color and life, in which God shows us
not only the origin of the universe but also the causes of man's unhappiness,
the reason for his sense of loneliness, and the origin of suffering
and death. But we find more than that; we find that creation results
from God's love and that it is love which leads him to announce man's
future salvation.
Readers may be surprised to find that there is a lot left unsaid and
that some of the explanations contained in these early chapters seem
inadequate or far-fetched. For example, what does the Bible mean by
saying that God created the world in just seven days? What is this
about God creating man from dust? Is it not rather childish to say
that the first woman was made out of man's rib?
Surely God had no hands for shaping man's body; he did not work like
a surgeon to take out his rib and sew him up again. Objections of
this sort mean that a person does not understand biblical language,
particularly not the literary genre of the first three chapters of
Genesis. The inspired writers were using the language of their time,
which was culturally backward. It was the only language available
to them and the only one their audience could understand.
We will remember that, in making himself known, it was not God's intention
to give us scientific statements; he was giving us only what we needed
to grasp basic religious truths. We should not expect to
find here a scientific explanation of the creation of the universe
or the origin of man. The Bible has nothing to say about when the
world was created, or about various geological periods, nor, let
it be said, does it provide any proof of the theory of evolution.
The teaching authority of the Church has rejected "absolute"
evolutionary theory, which says that man--all of man--is descended
from one of the higher animals. But, as Humanae Generis put
it, "The Magisterium of the Church leaves the doctrine of evolution
an open question, as long as it confines its speculations to the development,
from other living matter already in existence, of the human body.
(That souls are immediately created by God is a view which the Catholic
faith imposes on us.) In the present state of scientific and theological
opinion, this question may be legitimately canvassed by research and
by discussion between experts on both sides. At the same time, the
reasons for and against either view must be weighed and adjudged with
all seriousness, fairness, and restraint, and there must be readiness
on all sides to accept the arbitrament of the Church, as being entrusted
by Christ with the task of interpreting the Scriptures aright, and
the duty of safeguarding the doctrines of the faith. There are some
who take rash advantage of this liberty of debate, by treating the
subject as if the whole matter were closed--as if the discoveries
hitherto made, and the arguments based on them, were sufficiently
certain to prove, beyond doubt, the development of the human body
from other living matter already in existence. They forget, too, that
there are certain references to the subject in the source of divine
revelation which call for the greatest caution and prudence in discussing
it."
What the sacred text provides, therefore, is revealed doctrine about
the basic principles of our faith, clothed in primitive literary language.
The main principles it contains are these:
In a sober style, which is quite theological and almost ritual, in
a logical order, and in the kind of way a teacher puts things to make
it easy for his pupils to remember them, the first creation narrative
(Gen. 1:12:4a) describes the creation of the universe in ascending
order, that is, working up from less perfect things (earth, sky, animals)
to the most perfect (man).
In describing creation as happening over a seven-day period the sacred
writer has a mainly didactic purpose. He wants to show the people
of Israel that it was God's express will that they should observe
the sabbath rest and treat that day as especially holy, and therefore
he says that God himself "rested on the seventh day."
His purpose is also didactic (and in this he was inspired by God)
in setting out the stages in which God went about creation after his
initial act of creation, which consisted in creating out of nothing
the chaotic mass described in Genesis 1:2.
First he introduces order into this chaos, dividing light from darkness
dividing the higher waters from the lower waters, distributing land,
sea, plants. Then he ornaments creation: sun, moon, stars; fish, birds;
animals; man.
A careful reading of the verses shows that it was not God's intention
to give exact scientific information about the creation of each of
these separate beings. His purpose was primarily one of teaching religious
truths which we might summarize as follows:
1. All creation is the work of God alone. With creation time begins
as a means of measuring physical phenomena. Creation therefore occurs
without there being any pre-existing matter. Hence the first effect
of creation is the appearance of the chaotic mass
previously mentioned.
2. This shows that only God is eternal. Everything else owes its existence
to God, that is, is God's creature, which means that God is distinct
from the world and prior to it; he neither proceeds from nor depends
on that initial chaos, as Babylonian or Assyrian cosmogonies make
out: he transcends and is distinct from matter.
3. This creating, eternal, and totally transcendent being is the only
true God; he cannot be confused with the polytheistic and pantheistic
gods believed in at the time Genesis was written and to which the
Israelites themselves were very inclined. Since God was separate and
distinct from the universe he created, the Israelites were shown,
in this new light of revelation, that God could not be confused with
the sun or the moon or with the gods of the Assyrians: anything other
than the transcendental God, the one true God, was his creation and
therefore unworthy of worship.
4. Finally, God appears in this first creation account as almighty:
"God said" . . . "and so it was." Creation calls
for no effort on his part, full of power and majesty, he provides
everything with existence; and, furthermore, he maintains in existence
everything he has created, by an act of his will. In creating things
he communicates to them his goodness: "God saw everything that
he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). It could
not be otherwise, because there is only one Creator, God, who is an
infinite being and therefore infinitely good.
Archaeological excavations in the Near East have unearthed cosmogonical
texts connected with mythological traditions about the origin of the
world--Syro-Babylonian,Egyptian, Phoenician,
etc. When these are deciphered and compared with Genesis, we find
that they contain analogies and also basic differences. For example:
Non-biblical documents:
1. These are really theogonies--accounts of the origins of the
gods.
2. They assign no origin to the chaotic mass, the first product of
creation.
3. They have no concept of the unity of the human race: the gods created
more than one human couple and a multitude of cities.
4. They know nothing of any sabbath day of rest.
Genesis:
1. This is the only cosmogony (theory of the origin of the universe)
proper that is theocentric in character.
2. God the Creator is one, almighty, transcendent, producing everything
from nothing.
3. God formed only one human couple; the rest of the race came from
them in a process of generation.
4. Genesis teaches the sabbath rest.
The analogies to be found between Sacred Scripture and non-biblical
documents can be explained by reference to the existence of an initial
revelation to our first parents, which was passed on and was still
echoed, though in an adulterated form, in the cultures of Israel's
neighbors. However, aberrations in these accounts must be attributed
to man's imagination. Whereas the people of Israel were kept free
of error, thanks to new revelations to Abraham and to Moses, other
peoples retained vestiges of primitive truth, mixed in with their
various myths.
One created being stands out among all the rest as enjoying particular
dignity--man. He was created in a special way: God made him in
his own image (Gen. 1:27). This creation of man
is described in more detail in Genesis 2:"Then
the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being"
(Gen. 2:7).
Gregory of Nyssa noticed the indefiniteness of the phrase used in
the text, when it says that "God created man," and "by
using this indeterminate phrase the text is saying that God created
mankind." However, even though the word adam (= man,
carrying no article) is indefinite, its content is then specified:
"male and female he created them," which indicates that
initially there were only two individuals in the species, man and
woman, whom God endowed with reproductive organs to enable them to
carry out the sublime task of continuing God's work, by multiplying
the individuals in the human race, generation after generation. Adam
and Eve were the first couple and therefore all other humans have
a common origin.
As far as man's body is concerned, man derives from the earth, but
his soul--the breath of life--is created directly by God.
To create it God does not use any pre-existing matter. Man's soul
is completely spiritual. This means that man has certain spiritual
faculties which not only ensure his dominion over the rest of creation,
but also enable him to be gratuitously raised by God from his natural
level onto a level--the level of grace, a supernatural level--to
which his nature gives him no right.
In addition to creating Adam, God wished him to have others of his
kind: "Then the Lord God said: 'It is not good that the man should
be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.' . . . So the Lord
God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took
one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which
the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought
her to the man. Then the man said, 'This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was
taken out of Man (Gen. 2:18-23).
It is interesting to note that the sacred text points up the difference
between woman and the animals. Once she is formed out of the man's
"rib" and man is awakened from his deep sleep, he remembers
that he is different from all the animals. But now he has the being
he has dreamed about, who is completely like him: He exclaims enthusiastically
and gratefully: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of
my flesh" (2:23). He recognizes the woman as a human being, identical
in nature to himself. The sacred writer simply reports this; as in
the case of man, nothing specific is said about the matter which God
used in shaping woman. The only thing which is made clear is that
God worked in a direct and special way in creating both our first
parents.
The main points in this teaching about the creation of man are:
1. Man was created in a special way. God took a pre-existing piece
of matter (in this respect the creation of man was done in the same
way as that of animals), but he infused a soul into it--the breath
of life--which meant that man was enabled to share in God's own
life by means of grace.
2. Created in this way, man is higher than all the animals, whose
lord he is, as he is over all other creatures, but man himself is
subordinate to God, his Creator.
3. The dignity of woman, also created by God, stems from her being
like man, exactly the same in nature as he, created to complement
man, but in no sense to be his slave. The image of the rib in fact
confirms that God has given man and woman the same nature and the
same purpose.
4. In addition to telling us about the creation of man and woman,
the sacred text also asserts the divine origin of the institution
of marriage; marriage is one and indissoluble. The text specifically
states that: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother
and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24).
Later on, in the New Testament, Jesus Christ authoritatively adds,
"So they are no longer two but one" (Matt. 19:6).
5. God specifically states that the primary purpose of marriage is
its fruitfulness, the generation of children. He blesses the couple
and says, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue
it" (Gen. 1:28). He thereby makes them cooperators in the tremendous
task of generating each single, unrepeatable human being.
6. The second chapter of Genesis also states that there was no concupiscence
of the flesh, due to the state of innocence in which our first parents
were created; it tells us that after man and woman were married they
"were both naked and were not ashamed"
(Gen. 2:25). Their reason had perfect control over their external
and internal senses, and all their faculties were perfectly synchronized.
7. Man's original happiness and his elevation to the supernatural
order are indicated by the images, so meaningful to Orientals, of
the peaceful garden and the rivers watering it, and by the ease with
which Adam and Eve related to God, speaking to him face to face; they
were truly God's friends.
God laid one commandment on man: "You may freely eat of every
tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil
you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die" ;
(Gen. 2:16-17). This was a reasonable commandment, and man at first
accepted it without raising any objection.However,
the devil, who appears in the third chapter of Genesis in the form
of a serpent, tempted the woman: "Did God say, 'You shall not
eat of any tree of the garden'?" (Gen. 3:1). He, who had already
fallen, seeks to seduce the woman to imitate him by also disobeying
God. He begins by exaggerating God's commandment; he questions God's
justice and honesty and tries to undermine our first parents' trust
in God.
The woman falls into his trap and begins to dialogue with the devil.
At first she defends God, but she soon becomes less sure of herself
as she listens to what the devil has to say. As soon as she begins
to think about the forbidden tree, her sensuality is awakened and
it rapidly becomes more intense. At last she reaches the point where
she feels herself totally attracted to the apple and mistakenly sees
it as the key to contentment. The woman's disobedience
and then that of her husband constitute the first sin in the history
of mankind--what we, their descendants, call the "original
sin," a sin which affects all of us--the basic cause of the
breakdown of man's friendship with God.
By abusing their freedom in this way, our first parents suffered death
with respect to the life of grace to which God had gratuitously raised
them, and they also lost what are termed their preternatural gifts.
God had created them to be immortal, but one sin was enough to deprive
them of this gift--as he had warned them (Gen. 2:17). Through
their sin death entered the world and, as Paul affirms (Rom. 5:12),
it spread to all men because all are descended from Adam and Eve and
all of us sinned in them.
Physical death brought with it a whole cumulation of evils--diseases,
effort demanded by work, pains, anxieties, unrestrained concupiscence.
In the spiritual sphere, in addition to the loss of sanctifying grace,
it brought disorder in man's higher faculties, resulting in pride,
sloth, ambition, envy, and self-assertion: in other words, estrangement
from God, man's Creator.
Paul VI sums up this teaching in these words: "We believe that
in Adam all have sinned. From this it follows that on account of the
original offense committed by him, human nature, which is common to
all men, is reduced to that condition in which it must suffer the
consequences of that fall. This condition is not the same as that
of our first parents, for they were constituted in holiness and justice,
and man had no experience of either evil or death. Consequently, fallen
human nature is deprived of the economy of grace which it formerly
enjoyed. It is wounded in its natural powers and subjected to the
dominion of death, which is transmitted to all men. It is in this
sense that every man is born in sin. We hold, therefore, in accordance
with the Council of Trent, that original sin is transmitted
along with human nature, not by imitation but by propagation and is,
therefore, incurred by each individually" (Credo of the People
of God 16).
In spite of Adam and Eve's disobedience, God still acts as a true
Father to them. He knows what they have done, but he still seeks them
out, as Genesis describes in this way: "They heard the sound
of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and
the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord
God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the
man and said to him, `Where are you'?" (Gen. 3:89).
Man's first reaction after committing sin is to feel totally ashamed
and afraid of God's presence. He finds it difficult to recognize his
sin. But, even so, God comes to his aid; he wants man to be happy,
which is why he wants him to admit the truth. But man makes excuses;
he does not want to take responsibility for his own free act, and
at last he resorts to putting the blame on his wife.
She, in turn, is also reluctant to recognize that she has offended
God, and she blames the serpent, who "beguiled me and I ate."
Eventually man loses the state of happiness in which he was created,
and there is nothing he can do to recover it.
Just when Satan thought that he had totally defeated man--which
he saw as a victory over God himself--a great light shines out,
the promise of a future Messiah: "I will put enmity between you
and the woman," God tells Satan, "and between your seed
and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his
heel" (Gen. 3:15).
From this point onward, when our first parents are still in paradise,
God's infinite mercy shines out on man. After punishing Satan in the
serpent (Gen. 3:14), God announces a relentless struggle between the
devil and the woman's offspring. The final outcome
of this struggle will be the victory of man over Satan: It will be
one of Adam and Eve's descendants who will crush the head of the serpent.
The message of salvation which God gives us in Sacred Scripture is
the working out in history of this promise made in paradise. It starts
in the Old Testament and reaches its climax in the New with the coming
of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, our Savior. All the events recounted
in the Bible symbolize or foreshadow the Savior to be born to the
Blessed Virgin in Bethlehem.
Genesis has nothing to say about the long period between Noah and
his family, the survivors of the great flood, and the appearance of
the quite outstanding figure of Abraham, who marks the beginning of
the unfolding of God's plans of salvation. We know nothing until we
come up to around the year 2000 B.C., the historically dated period
in which Abraham lived. This silence is easy to understand if we remember,
as Augustine points out, that Sacred Scripture is not a scientific
treatise; the Holy Spirit--who speaks through the inspired writers--did
not wish to tell men things which had no part to play in the attainment
of eternal salvation.
After the fall of our first parents, God announced that a Savior would
redeem man from the power of Satan. The first step toward the fulfillment
of this promise was God's choice of Abraham, whose faith would make
him the father of a great people. God tells Abraham, "Go from
your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land
that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will
bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing"
(Gen. 12:12).
From this text and from non-biblical documents we learn that around
1850 B.C. a man by the name of Abraham, the son of polytheist parents,
a shepherd living in Ur of the Chaldees, moved with his family to
a new land, Canaan. He did so because of his unconditional faith in
a calling he received from God, a calling which had nothing to do
with any merit on his part.
The same thing happens when God chooses Isaac rather than Ishmael
and Jacob rather than Esau. He calls whomever he wants to use as an
instrument of his grace. Being chosen by God in this way is an honor
but it is also something very demanding.
In contrast to Adam's disobedience, Abraham responds to God's call
in total obedience. His faith is the cause of the very existence of
the chosen people, just as Mary's act of faith marks the start of
the New Testament.
In response to Abraham's faith God makes further promises. He promises
him an innumerable posterity, despite the fact that he has no children
and his wife is barren and past childbearing age: "Look toward
heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them.' Then
he said to him, 'So shall your descendants be"
(Gen. 15:5). He further promises to give the land of Canaan to his
posterity: "To your descendants I will give this land from the
river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates" (Gen.
15:18).
In return for this God asks Abraham and all his offspring to believe
in him, the one God. This monotheistic faith will now grow vigorously
in the midst of the reigning polytheism. Circumcision will act as
the mark to show that one belongs to God and obeys his commandments.
From now on Abraham belongs completely to God, who changes his name
from Abram to Abraham (= father of a multitude) (Gen. 17:5), and God
describes himself as "El Shaddai" (Gen. 17:1), God Almighty.
This build-up of relations between God and Abraham is concluded by
a covenant, which seals their promises to one another. This alliance
or pact is made in the manner typical of the culture. The contracting
parties immolate animals which have previously been divided into two
sets of pieces; they face one another and then pass between the bloody
pieces of the sacrificed animals; this shows that they are tying themselves
to contractual obligations and that if they break them they accept
that they will suffer the same fate.
In Abraham's case, to show God's transcendence there is a variation
from the normal procedure: God shows his presence in the form of fire.
"When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking
fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces . . . 'As
for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after
you through their generations'." (Gen. 15:17, 17:9). It is only
God who passes between the pieces, because only he commits himself
totally, since man cannot provide anything to balance what God promises.
The covenant made here with Abraham is personal and individual; later
on God will make it again with the people of Israel on Mount Sinai,
with Moses acting as their representative. All these covenants, sealed
with the blood of animals, symbolize the definitive covenant which
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, will seal with his own blood, when he
gives himself up on the cross to redeem mankind eternally (cf. Heb.
9:12).
God's pact with Abraham is the first stage in this definitive covenant.
Hence the extraordinary importance of Abraham in the history of our
salvation. The gospel proclaims this at the beginning of the messianic
era in the Benedictus, the canticle of Zechariah (Luke 1:72-73) and
in Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1:54-55). The Church's liturgy invokes
Abraham in the first canon of the Mass, in the ceremony of adult baptism,
in the Mass for marriage and the Mass for the dead.
A little further on God will renew the same covenant with Abraham's
son Isaac (Gen. 26) and with his grandson Jacob (Gen. 28:12).
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