Telling the Story from the Start

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, so goes the beginning of the Gospel of John. Or, take the beginning of the Torah, which begins with something like “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

The time of beginning can hold a kind of freshness, even renewal, a kind of changing of the guard, so to speak, allowing for the old and tired to be replaced with the fresh and new. But the beginning spoken of here in both biblical accounts seems to indicate a kind of beginning that is unique in its form or formation, a kind of newness that is without anything prior and so nothing old to be traded out and replaced. I wonder about that idea, however, having had it ingrained in me since I was a child, the idea of creation ex nihilo.

Ex Nihilo

The term ex nihilo is simply Latin for “from nothing,” and implies that creation of the world and all the universe with it was from nothing. It has been applied to the biblical account of creation for various philosophical and theological reasons since just about the first century CE, though those reasons are ideologically problematic in and of themselves. While believing that matter is eternal can also be problematic, so is the relationship of an eternal God with non-eternal matter (but that is a story for another time).

To state that Genesis begins with “the beginning” rather than “a beginning” is to assert that the absolute beginning of the universe is what is being communicated in Genesis 1:1. To assert that Genesis begins with “a beginning” rather than “the beginning” is to assert that a relative beginning of the universe is what is being communicated. An absolute beginning is one wherein there is no precursor, nor is there any other event like this one: it is the singular and absolutely unique beginning of all. A relative beginning is one wherein there is at least one precursor, something prior to its coming or being made as such: it is at least a second event in a chain of events.

The reason I wonder about creation ex nihilo is because I no longer see it so clearly and straightforwardly in the biblical text of Genesis 1:1-2; I was taught that it is there and the historical canonical teaching of the Church is that it is there, but in the text itself, I no longer do see it. Nor do I see it in the context–whether grammatical or historical–of the text. What I do see are the words, whether in ancient Hebrew or LXX Greek, telling a story of a beginning, rather than the beginning.

Beginning “A” Lesson

One huge reason is because, in the ancient Hebrew and LXX Greek of the Genesis account, the phrase “in the beginning” does not appear; rather, it states literally, “in beginning,” being anarthrous, that is, without the definite article the, which can mean one of a few things: either (1) it is to be read as it is written, that is, “in beginning”; or (2) it is to be read as implying the definite article the; or (3) it is to be read as implying the indefinite article a. I lean toward the third option, simply because the lack of the definite article, which could have easily been supplied, seems to be a result of intentionality and not accident.

What about options one or two, though? Is not the plain reading of the Hebrew or Greek sufficient: “In beginning”? Well, frankly, no, it is not. But what of option two: can’t the definite article the simply be implied, just as well as the indefinite article a? Again, no, it cannot.

This is because in the Hebrew, the vocalizations (i.e., vowels) that have been passed down through the centuries allow for “in a beginning,” which also makes sense of the term “in beginning”; and the term “in beginning” is not a verbal phrase but a nounal phrase, indicating that the indefinite article is to be supplied. In the Greek LXX, the anarthrous term “in beginning” implies not “the beginning,” but rather “a beginning” because the lack of the use of the definite article in Greek in this instance is such that it implies no definite article but only an indefinite one, that is, a.

Wondering about Beginnings

Thus, do I begin to wonder about not only what I have been taught but also what is that beginning that was only a beginning so long ago, of which God, his spirit, and the Word, which is the Christ, were a part and cause? I begin to wonder, what was the newness that was being presented at the time of this creation? And what was prior to that newness, given that something new presupposes that something old has come prior?

Of course, the age-old question of who created God or whether the universe is eternal are questions even three-year-olds ask, but such questions are highly warranted, given our curiosity about the origins and nature of life. In a very real way, it’s what makes us human.

In fact, on planet earth, it has been humans alone, so far as we know, who have sought to understand the nature of life as well as its origins. In the Ancient Near East, there was the creation account of Marduk, the supreme deity who proved his supremacy by dominating the chaos of the world. He wrestled the great beasts and monsters of the seas and overcame them in the match. So Marduk became sovereign over all, subduing all the earth by might of his will.

Of course, the God, Yahweh, of the Genesis account does no such thing: in fact, it is his very breath (spirit or wind) that hovers over all the chaos of the world and subdues it by simply speaking into and over it order and structure. God does not battle the world or earth as Marduk does, but countercultural to that time and age, the author of Genesis writes about the dominion of a God whose power is within but the might of his breath.

It is in this context, the countercultural comparison of Yahweh with such deities as Marduk, that I find no real need for an argument for creation ex nihilo, simply because the text of Genesis 1 is about comparing and contrasting Yahweh and the ancient Hebraistic account of creation of the world with those of the Ancient Near East, demonstrating that the God of the Hebrews, Yahweh, was supreme to any other god of the Ancient Near East. The author of Genesis 1 is borrowing from his cultural context and redefining the culture with a profoundly new understanding of the world and the divine.

But What was There?

So, just what existed before God created all things? And whence did all things come?

Presumably, God existed in whatever form he existed in, being, as Genesis 1:2 states, or breath or spirit or air or wind, depending on how the term ruach is translated. And this thing, this being, this force or power, this breath or wind not only apparently “hovered” over the waters of the deep (Hebrew: tehom), but truly “brooded” over them, even as the Hebrew for “hovered” (rachaph) can be translated.

But what was there, before God began to create? Presumably, there was the darkness, the deep (tehom), and the earth, which was formless and void (tohu-wa-bohu), all over which God brooded. So we see in verse 1 of Genesis chapter one, that when there was a beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Then, in verse 2, we see that there is darkness, the deep, and a wild, untamed earth, permeably covered in primordial waters; and there is God’s spirit as well.

I don’t know how from verse 1 to verse 2 of Genesis chapter one someone is able to discern the absolute beginning of the universe, unless that person takes the definite article to be the case in Genesis 1:1. It seems that on a plain, simple, and straightforward reading of the text, as it has been received in both ancient Hebrew and LXX Greek, the indication is that verse 1 leads immediately into verse 2, with no room for distinction or divergence, particularly because of the connection of the two verses and sentences with the conjunction of “and” or its translated counterpart (“now”). Thus, the God of verse 1 is the God of the spirit of verse 2 and the creating in verse 1 is continued on into verse 2.

But wherever creation ex nihilo comes from, I do not see it here.

(That is not to say that I outright reject it: I only question it and posit that we should carefully read the text we believe to be God’s Word before we draw conclusions or inferences about what is and is not true, especially if it is written down to be read.)

What I do see are, again, God and his spirit, the darkness, the deep, and the untamed earth. How these material objects relate to an eternal and immaterial God is a matter for another discussion.

God and Darkness

Now, this breath or spirit of God seems, literarily, to be compared with the darkness, both of which are hovering over the face of the deep. It is more than an interesting point to make regarding this, but is a question of the nature of who or what God is.

The Apostle John writes in his first letter that “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all,” as does James, who states that God is “the father of lights, in whom there is no shifting shadows of change.” If God is light, then why would the author of Genesis compare, rather than contrast, God with the darkness, which was also hovering over the face of the deep?

It seems, though, that God is not only light, but as Psalm 139 states, to God both light and darkness are one and the same. According to Isaiah and 1 Kings and several psalmists as well as the wilderness wandering account, God dwells in thick darkness. How can the God of light dwell in darkness, let alone “thick darkness”? What does this say about him–or, rather, about our conceptions of him as well as of light and darkness?

Tohu-wa-Bohu

The face of the deep (tehom) over which God’s spirit and the darkness rest is filled with what the Hebrew calls tohu-wa-bohu, which is emptiness, the void, a wasteland. More than a blank canvas, the image of tohu-wa-bohu is one of an overgrown and wild garden in need of taming. This is precisely why God’s command to humanity in Genesis 1:28 is to subdue or tame the earth, particularly, the Garden of Eden: God creates humanity in his own image and likeness so that humanity can carry on the work of God on their own in the capacity of the power of his spirit.

Presumably, there was something there when God created or shaped the earth, else there would be nothing over which the spirit and the darkness hovered. That something was filled with the tohu-wa-bohu. (For those who believe that nothing is something need only consider whether nothingness, being that which is not, is something, being that which is: the state of reality is such that nothingness, being not-A, and something, being A, are incongruous and cannot be construed as the one being the other nor vice versa: nothing is not something and neither is something nothing.)

Now, God created–or, rather, ordered and reordered–that which was before him, over which his spirit brooded like a mother hen tenderly broods over her eggs.

It seems the author of Genesis 1 is either unaware or uncaring about whether the matter before God in the account is eternal or not; rather, the author is writing to construct a mythos or tale or image or story or account of not so much what literally occurred but what literarily occurred, which is to say that the author of Genesis 1 is writing to demonstrate in his culture at his time what would have made the most sense for people of that era.

Now, we some nearly 3500 years later, read back onto or into the text our understanding of what the author meant for his day and age, and we begin to understand it with our limited understanding of just what the author was trying to convey, when it would have been rather clear to those of his day: the God Yahweh is the Supreme God with a capital “S” and a capital “G.”

The Tehom

The “deep” over which the spirit of God as well as the darkness rest is, in the Hebrew, tehom, and can be translated as “deep” or “sea” or “abyss” or even “chaos.” It is the Hebraic understanding of the state of the world without the order of God in it. In the ancient Hebraic understanding, as well as many other ancient cultures’ understanding, the seas or oceans were filled with chaos, having monsters or great sea creatures in them that could wreck havoc on you or your ship. The fact that the author of Genesis 1 portrays Yahweh as simply speaking order over the tehom indicates that the God Yahweh is so powerful, so mighty, so sovereign as to be “chill” or at rest and peace, even over and in the midst of tehom or chaos.

Tying it all Together

While we may never know for certain whether the universe is eternal or not, though we may have a number of philosophical or theological arguments that might argue one way or another for one or another viewpoint on this, we can know from the text of the beginning of Genesis that the God of Genesis, Yahweh, is pronounced as supreme and sovereign over all, especially the chaos in life. That’s the point of Genesis 1:1-2, to show that God is not out of touch with reality or the suffering of life or the chaos of our circumstances. He’s brooding over it all.

And it’s not a brooding where he’s wringing his hands in despair; it’s a brooding like a mother hen does over her eggs: he’s caring for all his “eggs,” carefully attending to each one till they hatch and are birthed anew into life. He’s not forgotten us; he is for us.

Lest we forget how good he is, remember this: he did it all to share his power with that which he created.