God of the gaps

There have been a number of posts this month on Genesis. John Hobbins and Karen Traphagen point us to and beyond the Crumb version. John has two other posts on Genesis 1 on the general subject of sexuality and the image of God: here and here. The Higgaion podcasts - all four to date - are lovely. Hear here and here for the image of God section. Doug Chaplin at clayboy has two posts in his series on the Anglican articles of religion, here and here, that frame issues and refine questions. Joel Hoffman at "God didn't say that" comments on the first word of the Bible as does the weekly commentary from JTS and Rachel at the Velveteen Rabbi. A host of posts (Joel many times and many many others, e.g. here, here, and here) were stimulated by Ellen van der Wolde's attempt to remap ancient Hebrew cosmological concepts and the verb 'create'.
It happened quite by chance that I also was reviewing Genesis with the Sunday School class and the adult Bible study at St Barnabas. And Joel kindly responded in real time to some of my questions. (Joel has a nice invitation on his 'about' page re questions.)

What has this to do with the God of the gaps? It's all in "the space between the notes", to quote Debussy's definition of music. The words and the spaces are important to faith. I could build faith on the gap following the first word in the bible. In this it is the JTS commentary that gives me the best chuckle. Bad grammar in the first sentence. Perhaps we should translate really slowly.

In the beginning of ...

(pause)

God created

the heavens and the earth

All this month, with some warnings and answers to comments from the above bloggers, I have been wondering about that other gap in Genesis 1 on image and likeness. Likeness is stated in intent but missing in action.

How is likeness to God and the heavenly council to be achieved? Can anything, should anything, be constructed or thought about this gap? (I find myself a little reserved on the 'our' of the image in the heavenly council - I wonder how the podcasts from Higgaion will proceed and if they will deal with the council in Job?) Note in a comment, Joel wrote about Ellen van der Wolde's response to this gap here.

Clayboy has pointed the way

Doug Chaplin's sequel was worth the wait. In particular I think this sentence is important: "This is what will have happened by the time the story ends."

I have left a question on several blogs recently - why is 'the likeness' not repeated in the creation of the human?  Two responded with 'form critical' suggestions. One with a caution not to build too much on the omission. Why? Isn't everything a house of cards - why not build another on a gap in the table?

The gap in the table is really obvious. With all the careful repetition in the first chapter of Genesis, this omission sticks out for me like a sore thumb.  Repeating myself:

Have you noticed this?

ויאמר אלהים נעשה אדם בצלמנו כדמותנו
And God said - let us make a human in our image after our likeness 

וירדו בדגת הים ובעוף השמים
to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven etc

ויברא אלהים את־האדם בצלמו
So God created the human in his image

בצלם אלהים ברא אתו
In the image of God he created it
זכר ונקבה ברא אתם
male and female he created them

God says - let's make the human in our image according to our likeness
But then God creates the human in his image

What's missing? In a poem where repetition is a pattern closely followed, this 'after our likeness' is not repeated.

Likeness without image is used in Genesis 5 - image without likeness in Genesis 1. How are we to understand the missing words? The use of likeness with respect to the human is not taken up again till the visions of Ezekiel.

My self-discipline is not adequate at the moment to this question. John Hobbins may be right - maybe it is just a synonym.

Enjoy this commentary

The weekly commentary from JTS is here. Genesis is all the rage these days. The commentary is a hoot. Go back and click it and enjoy. I am so glad my Rashi has had coffee spilled on it. It shows at least it was near me.

Creation - tomorrow's Sunday School lesson

I have read and reread in Hebrew the first pericope of Genesis. It seems to me that Herbert was right - there is but one day - so this creation account is not in the past. Then I was reading Matt's long article on Cana - and I wonder how to interpret the days and hours of John's gospel. Here he writes:

By beginning his gospel with these allusions to the creation story in Genesis 1, and in mimicking this first creation story by way of rhetorical imitation, John was also telling his readers that a New Creation has begun in and through Jesus Christ.

Really? I know this is traditional sequential thinking - old creation then new creation. But does the first chapter of Genesis (to 2:4) exclude redemption? I have a hard time thinking this. Why would Jesus say to Nicodemus that as a teacher in Israel he should have known about being born from above? Surely such teaching is in the knowledge of Israel or how else would the son know it?

The whole gospel is implied in one word. Hear.

More words only means 'explanation' and explanation is not hearing.

Tomorrow, I hope to immerse the children in a strange tongue. I may read the whole of the creation story in Hebrew - it is so musical, perhaps it will stand on its own. I will remind them what they know already so as to encourage 'hearing'. And we will sing the Shema first and learn the word for one: .אֶחָד

I have a Korean boy in the class - I bet Hebrew will be as easy for him as English.

Understanding is nothing. Hearing is everything. As is implied in that creative Ker, Jesus said 'follow me'. All else is commentary.

Time and tense

There is a long discussion of Genesis 1:1 at Better Bibles Blog: In the beginning .... In the beginning of one's study of Hebrew verb forms, one might be taught that there are tenses of sorts: the perfect, usually meaning a past completed action, the imperfect, usually indicating an incomplete ongoing action or state of affairs, and perhaps the participle, indicating a present aspect of action. Or perhaps not - for if any is preceded by a vav then the aspect switches, or perhaps not - perhaps the vav indicates modality. I have read too many arguments over aspects of verbs and time to think that anyone knows anything - so it appears that when translating a Hebrew verb one can take creative liberty with tense and aspect as one wishes.

The conversation at BBB referred to above is about bias in translation. Do you have to know who did the translation to know with what sort of care to read it? I bet you do - 100 to 1 in favour of Yes. There is historical bias, pious bias, governance bias, sexist bias, faithless and confessional bias, and all manner of bias!

But what about this first verse of Genesis?
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
Is there even an active verb in the sentence? Is the creative job complete in the first word? Perhaps the ending indicates that the first word is also the last. If we are as recent theologians say co-creators - then maybe the verb should be translated with a gerund possessed by God from the beginning or when God began to create. But what then becomes of the form of the verb בָּרָא which is qal perfect and not a gerund and not preceded by a vav? Does the Bet act as a modal shift?

If my bias is toward God and the human co-operating - a sort of multi-verse of infinite possibilities - then maybe the gerund is a good ploy. If my bias is of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, then the perfect is better and the ית of the first word acts like a sofit - closing off the roof of the house from the beginning, a final letter form in the first word! If my bias is for creation ex nihilo then perhaps I don't want to imply that anything might have existed in the beginning with God except of course all the uncreated things like word, wisdom, throne, Torah, etc.

It seems we might translate with bias yet our translations might still be read by someone else of a different bias and our carefully hidden hopes that the reader will be swayed by us will be missed anyway!

Funny - but I think we translate for ourselves - in confrontation with the unknown and known Knower expressed first by אֱלֹהִים the word used for God in 1:1 and then at the end of the section by יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים

I put Genesis 1 to 2:4 into a diagram some time ago. It is a wonderful and engrossing masterpiece of literary form and function. By the way, God did not take 7 days, but only 1 and we live in it.

Friends

Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.

Yesterday at a studio concert in Cobble Hill, a small town in the southern end of Vancouver Island, we heard a performance of Britten's canticle setting the words of T.S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi.

Is anyone still with me? There is so much fracturing of communion going on these days, I wonder. I have not been abandoned by my Counselor, in spite of the fact that I can take both Britten and Eliot together.

If anyone has been appointed by the invocation of fellowship-breaking verses like 'Come ye out from among them' then let the same ones also ask whether 'the word of God originated with them'. Is it in the words of the hymn that God should take his power and reign, or that we should say to God, 'let me take your power and reign'?

But they would not listen for their hardness of heart.

Still here? Britten and Eliot are two of my 100 best - in the 20th century. Could I really be receiving the gift of Britten's music and maintain a position of not receiving him? Those who would be great among you should be righteous for more than one day.

It is regrettable perhaps that some have gone out from among us. It remains for me self-evident that the first sin of the flesh is the desire to be right on one's own terms. It is possible for groups of people to share such sin. Too bad.

Now this really is a personal opinion. Those who are leaving, do they recognize that their stance against this and that practice, whether it be acceptance of those who are different from them in desire or the acceptance of the place of people in the Church who have a differing anatomical structure, - do they recognize, I ask, if their very legal stance has not or has contributed to the failure of the Gospel in the very tradition they so long continued in?

Money is a cheap way of writing off the prods of conscience.

What does it matter that "I" am right when I have failed in the Gospel? What does it matter that "I" am right in all my doctrine when I have not known love or been known by love?

Hypocrite - this above all you should have understood. To think I even read any of your books when after all is said and done, you didn't know, and you couldn't bear all things. Don't you even know what God does by the Spirit in the death of Jesus Christ for the sake of those who are belonging to him? If you say you do know this - why can't you say it? Why do you reduce his Gospel to your Law?

Double Yod

I had just written Extreme Allegory when I find in the work of Genesis a double yod where it needs to be most expected!

וַיִּיצֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם, עָפָר מִן-הָאֲדָמָה, וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו, נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים; וַיְהִי הָאָדָם, לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה.

7 Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

See Rabbi Wolf's comments here.

Needless to say I would counter (as does Paul in Romans 10:6-7) with Deuteronomy 30:14

יד כִּי-קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר, מְאֹד: בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ, לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ.

14 But the word is very near you, in your mouth, and in your heart, and you can do it.

It is not by striving that we reach to divinity. And there is no place in our fleshly existence that our Lord will not go with us and in us. If there is such a non-place, then Incarnation is not truth.

Interesting News from Sandi Dubowski. on the film Jihad for Love.

Another thing arrived in the mail - an article "My Close Application to the Language" in BC Studies on William Henry Collison (Author of In the Wake of the War Canoe - an amazing book) and Nineteenth Century Haida Linguistics, by Marcus Tomalin. It looks as if it will be very interesting reading.

I beg to enclose a specimen of the two languages Hydah and Tsimshean in which you will see the complete difference in construction, sound, &c. As I am of opinion that the Hydah's are of Chinese or Japanese origin or possibly indirect[ly?] connected with the Ainos of Japan (though from illustrations which lately appeared in the The Gleaner of those people I am led to doubt it) I would like to pursue some work bearing upon the language and customs of those Races in order to ascertain more clearly.

He goes on to present Collison's analysis of the Lord's prayer in the two languages Hydah (Haida) and Sm'algyax (Coast Tsimshian). I will blog more when this percolates to the top of my pile of books - including so many... and when my wife has finished it - for she too will want to read the details of her daughter's husband's work.

Creation - 2

Well - I did a second diagram - this time in 10 columns and with some of the regular rows aligned.

Creation

Writing is glorifying the One who created the heavens and the earth - all things visible and invisible. The + signs in the diagram are for the invisible and the visible from black holes to suns to dark matter, from process to end product, the ending we are known as but which we ourselves long to know. See my diagram here.

So Genesis is not a psalm - but I have put it with the psalms. I am looking at this diagram spread out on an 11x17 piece of paper (I hate wasting paper so I am looking at an earlier version).

It is in 8 double columns - these are the obvious divisions of the text. The first five columns end with the familiar refrain - and there was evening and morning, ...

Column 6 is split into two since day 6 is so long being so full of words. Column 8 is the seventh day at the beginning of chapter 2. Notice how verse 4 - these are the accounts of the heavens and the earth when they were created - completes the circle from the first verse.

I have coloured each action of God with a roughly square box - green for create, deep red for speaking, bright yellow for seeing, deep blue for distinguishing, burnished gold for calling, maroon for making, sky blue for putting, fine gold for blessing, red for rest.

In this introductory - you know, if you never got farther than the introduction, you would have much of the whole! In this introductory section to the Hebrew Bible, God introduces himself by his works - they are better than newspaper headlines or a Herodian hotel.

You can learn some Hebrew from this diagram - but let it be for fun - and remember, I might be misleading you.

What does God do? He creates (בָּרָא bara') the heavens and the earth - and more, specifically (follow the blue connector to the green squares) , he created (וַיִּבְרָא vayivra) the great sea monsters - whoever wrote this work knew that whales were important. Create - make - is there a difference? Maybe the created are meant to respond. Ultimately and somewhat centrally in the text - he creates - three times it says that - the human.

Notice how the earth brings forth herbage and stuff and animals and creepy-crawlies and stuff. This is evolution, by the way - but I don't really want to go to that conversation. Some things are a real waste of time and energy. Get over it. How many days did it take? One (in the day that God created.) So if you have trouble with 3 in 1 - do the created order 7 in 1. And then rejoice that 'we count 300, but there is but one and that one ever' (borrowed from George Herbert, Easter).

I have been trying to see the structure of this text more clearly - I am not sure I have yet. The 7 are somewhat obvious. The 10 words - and God said - are also potentially a set of discriminatory markers. And so are the 6+ ki-tov - and it was good. And so are the refrains - and it was so וַיְהִי-כֵן vayehi-ken. Are these like level 1 2 and 3 headings or footings - to invite us into the structure?

It has always struck me that light was first - and it has a whole day. Light is so fundamental, the foundation of information. All that we do is dependent on it. Photons - massless, limiting our knowledge by their finite speed, forming time, yet for eons thought if thought at all to be of infinite speed (Aquinas - book 51 I think - not that I have had time to read Aquinas).

Day 2 - the surface. I deliberately chose a child's word - as if seeing the creation from the earth. The surface - which God made, see also: the two great lights, the beast of the earth after its kind, and the human (though also spoken of as created) - and both these latter are living beings - nephesh נֶפֶשׁ xayah חַיָּה. That's for those who have trouble with the soul of the beast. (Like I have trouble lining up letters to go left and right).

The surface plays a role in days 2, 4, and 5. Day 3 is given to the herbage - and it makes its place again in day 6 as food. There are other patterns, shades of meaning in light and darkness, day and night, morning and evening. The 'goods' (I thought of using goods instead of the rather flat 'work' in chapter 2) - the goods of day 3 - herbage, day 5 - fish, and day 6 - beasts and creepy-crawlies, are repeated in the exhortation to rule that is given to the human - and repeated again in the instruction concerning food. (Busy day).

There is much to say - but enough for now. I do not write commentary - too much like work. I only play.

The seven days

I am working on an image of Genesis 1 - away this weekend so can't read the million posts - but tell me what you think. [Update - a few days later - it is finished.]

Genesis 1:1-8

From time to time, I translate other things than the Psalms. Here is a diagram of Genesis 1:1-8 for the level-2 Hebrew class at Congregation Emmanu-El in Victoria.