Being – Part 4

I stated in the last post that I would be entering into the spiritual arena to begin our journey into who we are. While there are a number of sources to pull from I will start from the primary source recognized in the West – the bible. Now I recognize that this will create a number of issues which will need to be addressed, something which I will attempt to do within the text as it proceeds. However, I need to address an important aspect from the context of what the bible’s purpose meant to the children of Israel.

The Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, are the foundation of all Hebrew thought. They are recognized as the books of Moses. In the west, we have interpreted this to mean that Moses wrote them. Historical biblical research has demonstrated repeatedly that this is not factual. The dating of these books appears to be around the time when Israel was in exile in Babylon.

The vital aspect to this is how the people, prisoners in a land not their own, took the oral history of their community and shaped it to create a narrative to give themselves an identity. “Who are we and how is God working with us in this place of captivity?” is the over-arching theme they work from as the writers begin to define and distinguish themselves from the other tribes who occupied the places they resided in. It is from this platform that the creation of their being as individuals and a nation springs forth.

Biblically, there are four creation narratives which explore how all things came into being. The first one is found in Genesis 1:1 which declares, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Much to the chagrin of a number of fundamentalist types, the second narrative starts at the next verse, Genesis 1:2, with, “And the earth was without form, and void…” Since the adoption of the Hebrew canon into the New Testament writings, people have been trying to group these two verses into one and the same narrative. Biblical scholars have produced massive works showing that these are in fact two separate accounts describing two separate events. So, I have neither time, space nor the inclination to rehash their findings and just ask that you take what I’ve said on “faith” until you’ve got the gumption to investigate it yourself.

This second narrative begins at verse 2 and runs straight through to Genesis 2:3. It explains the entire cosmology of Earth as understood by the scribes of the day of the Babylonian exile. (Scholars play havoc on fundamentalist traditions again!) Contained within this narrative is the proclamation made over mankind:

And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Gen 1:26-27)

From this text we have the first indication of how mankind came into being. Molded into the image of the divine, mankind was created. The “likeness” element of the divine proclamation would have to be something that humanity would be responsible to accomplish, not God.

(If you take exception with this reading, please remember this one thing: Long before you snotted and bawled, puked and pooped your britches, humanity took these texts as absolutes and around them crafted the world we now occupy, whether right or wrong to your liking. Your opinion against the backdrop of such an endeavor of humanity, well I think you get the picture of how they feel about you too.)

The third narrative will be found beginning at Genesis 2:4 and running through verse 25. There are a number of items which fall out of sequence from this last narrative and offer a different perspective on the involvement of mankind within the place known as The Garden of Eden. This story, as in the second, displays elements from Babylonian culture which were incorporated in the story of Israel. (Oh, you thought that this was original? Scholars and historians strike again. How is your faith doing?)

As I said, these narratives, all three of them, are about Israel. They have nothing to do with the rest of the world. These are the stories that they created to define themselves, to make a desolate and destitute people back into a nation with a common identity despite being exiles from their own land. The Hebrew people understand this. Christians take exception to it simply because they believe that by adopting the Hebrew canon into theirs, somehow, the narrative is theirs too. If you don’t have a drop of Hebrew blood in you, the story is…well, just a story about a small group of people on this planet. So much for an inclusive gospel, right?