Biblical Israel - The Creation Stories
Updated: Mar 9
The Priestly Creation Story (Chap 1:1 - 2:4)
The P account of creation in seven days is a brilliant beginning to the Old Testament. The creation itself unfolds in six days, carefully balanced into three days each:
1st Day – Creation of Light
2nd Day – Creations of Heavens and Water
3rd Day – Creation of Land and Vegetation
4th Day – Creation of Bodies of Light
5th Day – Creation of Creatures of Heaven and Water
6th Day – Creation of Life and its Vegetable Food, With the Creation of Humankind
On the first three days, God creates the physical world and separates each part into its place. On the last three days, God populates this world with living creatures and assigns them their proper roles. The climax of the creative process is the human being, whom God makes male and female, blesses, and appoints as those to have dominion over his new creation.
The world this describes obviously doesn't share the same scientific view of the contemporary age, in which the earth is one planet around one sun in a universe full of stars and planets. The ancient picture of the universe is much different. To the Hebrews, the earth was a disc surrounded by water not only on the sides, but underneath and above as well. A firm bowl (firma-ment) kept the upper waters back but the sky had gates to let the rain, hail, and snow through. The sun, moon, and stars moved in fixed tracks along the underside of this bowl. From below the disc, the waters rose up in the form of wells, rivers, and oceans. The earth stood on firm pillars sunk into the waters, much like the pilings of a pier. Now deep below the earth was the 'Abode of the Dead', called Sheol, which could only be entered by the dead.
This image of the world did not make the Hebrews unique. Many of the ancient civilizations around them believed the same layout of the world. Even the order of creation was similar to the Babylonians and their story of creation. Their account, called the Enuma Elish, was known from at least 1700 B.C., long before the priestly account, and followed the same order of creation.
