When I said I’d do daily readings I may have been overly ambitious but it’s still a good goal, especially if I keep the sections smaller. Anyway, today I’m meditating upon Genesis 1.14-23.
NRSV: 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
CEB: 14 God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night. They will mark events, sacred seasons, days, and years. 15 They will be lights in the dome of the sky to shine on the earth.” And that’s what happened.16 God made the stars and two great lights: the larger light to rule over the day and the smaller light to rule over the night. 17 God put them in the dome of the sky to shine on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw how good it was.
19 There was evening and there was morning: the fourth day.
BHS:
1.14 – This god’s creative activity centers around separating (לְהַבְדִּ֕יל בֵּ֥ין)—Day and Night; Above-Waters and Below-Waters, Below-Waters and Dry Land—and name/purposing: Day; Night; Dome; Above-Waters; Below-Waters; vegetation; seed; fruit-bearing trees; etc.
1.16 – Sun and Moon, or the ‘Greater’ Light and the ‘Lesser’ Light, rule the Day/Night. Many in the ancient world worshipped these lights as gods. They don’t receive this status here but they’re recognized as important nevertheless. Though their importance is contextualized as being non-gods created by the Creator God.
Theological Interpretation The Creator’s activity as Creator isn’t making things out of nothing (Creatio ex Nihilo) here but organization of things created. It may be implied that these things were created previously but these acts of creation isn’t that act of creation. These acts of creation are organizing boundaries, designating authorities, and purposing. The Creator God oversee and administrates. The created things do as they are told—even the Greater and Lesser Lights.
NRSV: 6 And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8 God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
9 And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
CEB: 6 God said, “Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters to separate the waters from each other.” 7 God made the dome and separated the waters under the dome from the waters above the dome. And it happened in that way. 8 God named the dome Sky.
There was evening and there was morning: the second day.
9 God said, “Let the waters under the sky come together into one place so that the dry land can appear.” And that’s what happened. 10 God named the dry land Earth, and he named the gathered waters Seas. God saw how good it was. 11 God said, “Let the earth grow plant life: plants yielding seeds and fruit trees bearing fruit with seeds inside it, each according to its kind throughout the earth.” And that’s what happened. 12 The earth produced plant life: plants yielding seeds, each according to its kind, and trees bearing fruit with seeds inside it, each according to its kind. God saw how good it was.
13 There was evening and there was morning: the third day.
BHS:
1.6 – In Genesis 1, we see God speak things into order (existence?). I’ve heard this juxtaposed with the Second Creation Narrative where God seems to ‘make’ things—see 2.4, where YHWH God ‘makes’ earth and heaven (עֲשׂ֛וֹת יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים) and 2.7, where YHWH God ‘forms’ the male human (וַיִּיצֶר֩ יְהוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים). In v. 3, when God speaks and light appears, this makes sense. Likewise, this patterns seems to be in place in v. 6 when God speaks in order to separate the waters from the waters with a dome. By the way, Faithlife (Logos) has put together a nice visual info graph for this this:
1.7 – Notably though, after God speaks he also makes the dome (וַיַּ֣עַשׂ אֱלֹהִים֮ אֶת־הָרָקִיעַ֒). The dome separates the waters (see the above info graph).
1.9 – More separating: this time water from land.
1.10- More naming (‘Earth’ and ‘Seas’) and acknowledging the work as ‘good’.
1.11-13 – While these vv. include the praising of creation as ‘good’ there’s an interesting shift in ‘making’. Here ‘the fruits trees that make fruit’ ( עֵ֣ץ פְּרִ֞י עֹ֤שֶׂה פְּרִי֙ לְמִינ֔וֹ) indicate the the creation has some sort of agency of its own now.
Theological Interpretation In this section we continue to see this god organizing the world. This god separates, designates, and names (purposes) things. He speaks but he ‘acts’ (makes) somehow (by speaking?). But he isn’t alone. His creation begin to make as well.
It’s been several years since I’ve had a proposal accepted for the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. I’m excited to announce that this year—presuming we are able to meet in Boston, MA, in person in late November—I’ll be presenting on the topic ‘Muddy Paper in Plastic Bags: Practicing Textual Criticism’ for the program unit Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context. I’ve written about the activity that I’ll be discussing in this paper/presentation. See these posts:
I’m excited about this. I hope it’s live in Boston because (1) I have never been to Boston; (2) I enjoy this conference because I’m a geek; and (3) by November I’m going to be sick of presenting things online if that’s the way it goes.
As I prepare for my summer class on ‘The Hebrew Scriptures’, it’s time to do some reading through the Book of Genesis. The course is fifteen days long and three of those days focus on Genesis. That’s 20% of the entire course. This will be true in the fall when the class is fifteen or sixteen weeks long.
I’m not planning on reading through the entirety of Genesis. I’ll do a few verses here and there during the week. We’ll see how far I get over the summer.
As I work through this text, I’ll post translations from the New Revised Standard Version and newer Common English Bible as well as the Hebrew from the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.
Today, I’ll begin with 1.1-5.
NRSV: In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
CEB: ‘When God began to create the heavens and the earth— 2 the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters— 3 God said, “Let there be light.” And so light appeared. 4 God saw how good the light was. God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God named the light Day and the darkness Night.
There was evening and there was morning: the first day.
BHS:
1.1 – The NRSV and CEB take divergent paths with בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א. Several years ago, during my previous incarnation in the blogosphere, I pondered whether ‘In the beginning when God…’ or ‘When God began…’ was the best translation. Joel Hoffman responded by sharing his own helpful post: ‘On Genesis 1:1’. See also, Robert Holmstedt’s Vetus Testamentum article (available as a free PDF), ‘The Restrictive Syntax of Genesis i.1’. I’m not Hebrew grammarian, so I’ll only note that Holmstedt’s view was more aligned with the CEB while Hoffman’s was more aligned with the NRSV.
1.2- Robert Alter translates as תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ ‘welter and waste’ for the following reason (from the Kindle version of The Hebrew Bible):
Notably, both the NRSV and CEB agree that וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים should be interpreted as a ‘wind of God’ rather than ‘the S/spirit of God’.
1.4- God’s interpretation of his own creation as ‘good’ is important to this chapter. God approves of his work. But what does it mean for it to be good? Does this mean it functions as intended? That it’s aesthetically pleasing in some way? Is there a moral element at all (it’s good but after humans disobey it will lose this goodness)?
1.5- I’ve wondered: Did the ancient scribes mean ‘Day…Night’ literally? They had to have understood the role of the sun, moon, and stars, even if only in an elementary sense, as concerns the ‘arrival’ of the ‘Day’. Did they think that ‘Light’ and ‘Day’ existed in some sense beyond the function of the sun, moon, and stars? Is this just a polemic against worshipping heavenly bodies?
Theological Interpretation
Modern debates regarding the relationship of this text to active cosmologies aren’t irrelevant but they can be distracting. Our author(s) clearly don’t know what we know about the universe. What they did know from other ancient cultures like the Egyptians and Babylonians were stories where the gods create the world, often using violence, and rarely for reasons that are broadly beneficial to humanity (e.g., the Enuma Elish; the Memphite Theology). Here we have a singular deity (though maybe not alone; see v. 26). This god creates for the purposes of housing humanity in a cosmic temple. This god takes chaos—tohu wabohu—and organizes it into a place that’s inhabitable.
Theologically, this where modern and ancient cosmologies can overlap. If the divine presence is assumed, a modern religious thinker may not interpret the forthcoming ‘seven days’ literarily, seeing the process of the cosmos as being instead billions of years in the making, but this doesn’t mean the divine presence wasn’t active in this process.
Day and Night are a framework, as are ‘days’, and this framework is sabbatarian in nature, as god takes a six days to work then rests as humans ought (according to the Torah).
This week I was talking to my friend and mentor, Dr. Jeff Garner, and he informed me that the Church where he is a Pastor (where I spent several years of my life and where I married my wife, Miranda) is beginning a series on the Book of Revelation. He proposed that sometime next week we do a video interview (this time I’d be the one being interviewed rather than being in my traditional pandemic-time role as the one doing the interview) wherein we discuss this controversial text. In preparation, I want to write out some of my thoughts.
But there’s another reality I must face. John of Patmos (Rev. 1.1) was a disciple of Jesus who was persecuted by Rome. While many Christians in the United States today feign persecution, and that may color the Apocalypse, I must remember that Christians globally remain one of the most persecuted categories of people. To what degree John and his community were unfairly treated, we may never know, but if we put ourselves in the place of a ostracized and often maligned minority community within a sprawling Empire, we’re bound to be more sympathetic to John and his vision than if we read it through our experience with privileged American Christians who see a loss of status as the same thing as being persecuted or if we read through our experience with doomsday prophets and date predictors who are wrong, time after time.
I come back to the Book of Revelation because I recognize it gives a voice to those within my tradition who have been marginalized, silenced, and even martyred. I favor the Jesus of the Gospels who tends to be somewhat pacifistic (and who according to Anabaptist-hermeneutics was pacifistic). The Jesus of Revelation 19, the warrior-Jesus, seems to be a different, even contradictory, Jesus (see though the interpretation of Revelation by Quaker theologian Wess Daniels). Again, genre matters, so I don’t need to read passages like Revelation 19 as being literal predictions that Jesus will appear in space-time on our earth using violence against the armies of the world (as popularized in The Left Behind ‘novels’). There’s a place to spiritualize it, if you will, so that the warrior-Jesus fights spiritual enemies in ways that are depicted as mirroring the physical violence so common on our earth but hopefully subverting that physical violence to show that true warfare isn’t ‘against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places’ as the Pauline author of the Epistle to the Ephesians worded it.
How I read the Book of Revelation
This is how I’ve chosen to read the Apocalypse. I use the aforementioned author of Ephesians as a paradigm. He uses images of warfare not to advocate for warfare but to subvert the power claims of physical warfare—the kind of warfare perfected by Empires but not the the Kin(g)dom of God (or whatever other metaphor works best for you).
Speaking of ‘Empire’, this is central to how I interpret this text. On several occasions, John of Patmos mentions ‘Babylon’ (Rev. 14.8; 16.19; 17.5; 18.2, 10, 21). Most scholars seem to agree that this code for ‘Rome’. John knows better than to critique Rome-as-Rome so he critiques Rome-as-Babylon. His Jewish readers would’ve known what he meant by Babylon, the destroyer of the First Temple, was Rome, the destroyer of the Second Temple. Also, they would’ve been familiar with a tradition going back to the Book of Daniel where the fall of one Empire only leads to the rise of the next Empire so that in some sense one can speak of there being an ‘Evil’ that might ‘die’ with the collapse of Persia, or the Ptolemies, or the Seleucids, but can always return from the dead again, as they were seeing in Rome.
The Book of Revelation is an ‘apocalypse’. It begins with these words in the NRSV, ‘The revelation of Jesus Christ…’ which translate Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. That first word, Ἀποκάλυψις, transliterated Apokalupsis, doesn’t mean the ‘end’ of something, per se, but it means that something is being revealed (which is why it’s called the ‘Book of Revelation‘). Another way of saying this is that something is being exposed; something that wasn’t visible is being made visible. This might mean that the heavenly or spiritual realm is being revealed to earthly or physical eyes, or it might mean what the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes (12.14) meant when he says, ‘For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.’ Or what the Matthean Jesus (12.36-37) meant when he says, ‘I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.’
In the Christian tradition there will be some sort of ‘final’ apocalypse in this sense. The Apostle Paul warned in Second Corinthians 5.10, ‘For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.’ The Nicene Creed states, ‘He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.’ And then there’s the liturgical acclamation: ‘Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.’ But not every ‘apocalypse’ has to be final, final.
But it’s possible to experience a semi-apocalypse, i.e., an apocalypse that ends an age. This is subjective. It’s not necessarily what the Apostle Paul, or the Nicene Creed, or the aforementioned liturgical confession mean, but it’s real. Elizabeth Dias wrote a wonderful article for the New York Times titled ‘The Apocalypse as an “Unveiling”: What Religion Teaches Us About the End Times’ that makes this point better than I can.
Every semester when I teach the Hebrew Scriptures or the Christian Scriptures, I frame their origination around the collective trauma of the destruction of the First Temple (the Hebrew Scriptures) and the execution of Jesus and destruction of the Second Temple (the Christian Scriptures) to explain why these works were written, by whom, and to whom. (As I’ve written, David M. Carr’s Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins has been an important dialogue partner for me.) Every semester I try to relate these collective traumas to what Americans experienced during 9/11. The problem has been that my students can’t relate. When I was younger, I understood the concept of ‘Pearl Harbor’ but didn’t ‘understand’ it. Similarly, this year, I don’t think any of my students had been born yet when 9/11 happened. They ‘understand’ my reference but they don’t understand my reference.
Now, COVID-19, and this pandemic, has caused collective trauma. It has ended an age (see Ben Rhodes, ‘The 9/11 Era is Over’) and a new one will emerge. We talk about the ‘new normal’ knowing not of what we speak. For the foreseeable future, when I want my students to understand what prompted the formation of the writings they know as the ‘Old Testament’ and the ‘New Testament’ I won’t relate the destruction of the First and Second Temples to 9/11; I’ll relate these traumas to this earth-shattering, time-stopping pandemic.
Allison Murray’s ‘What is Now Uncovered/Don’t Waste an Apocalypse’ gets to the point I want to make next. Apocalypses shatter our myths. They expose our false narratives. As an American, the triumphalism of the military industrial complex, or Wall Street, have been shown to be lies. Bombs don’t stop a pandemic. Money doesn’t stop a pandemic. And when a pandemic hits your shores, no wall is going to stop a pandemic. But the pandemic will show you what happens when ‘the wealthiest nation on earth’ forces most people to live paycheck-to-paycheck, spends more on war than healthcare, continues to underserve communities (usually because of race), ignores the weaknesses of its education system (or in DeVos-mode, tries to ruin that education system). Many people saw our weaknesses as an empire. Now the pandemic has left us nowhere to hide.
I don’t mean this in a cheery, triumphalistic, ‘told-you-so’ way. This apocalypse is horrifying, as Dr. Kelly J. Baker’s article ‘It’s the End and Nothing Feels Fine’ rightly captures. But we’re here now. And the Book of Revelation is less literature to be read and more a mirror for reflection. What happens when the unseen is seen? What happens when the lies are exposed? What happened when an era ends? Apocalypse. As Pope Francis has proclaimed, this isn’t divine judgment, but it’s our judgment. This virus has judged us. It has exposed us. There’s nothing more apocalyptic than that.
Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ via Wikimedia Commons
Some parts the video are a bit choppy due to Internet connection. For that, I apologize. But overall it’s a great conversation that I hope y’all enjoy.
Here are the questions I asked Dr. Barber during our interview:
Tell us why I’m talking to you about the Apostle Paul. What does Paul have to do with your research?
Can you provide a short biography of Paul? Who was he? Why is he important? What does he have to do with the eventual shape of Christianity?
A couple weeks ago my students encountered the Resurrection Narratives of the Gospels. Soon they’ll read Paul’s explanation of the resurrection from his First Epistle to the Corinthians. Additionally, they have a basic understanding of Jewish apocalypticism. Can you connect Jesus’ resurrection, apocalypticism, and Paul’s worldview together for us?
Many of my students have spent time learning about the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants. As you explain in your book Paul, a New Covenant Jew (co-authored with Brant Pitre and John A. Kincaid), Paul values these covenants but he interprets then in relation to the ‘New Covenant’. What’s this New Covenant and what does it have to do with the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants?
What’s central to Paul’s theology? What’s the the core of his thought?
While I teach at an Episcopal high school the religious-majority is Catholic. You’re a Catholic scholar. What’s one thing you wish Catholics understood better about Paul? And then let’s flip it around and tell me what’s one thing you wish Protestants understood better about Paul?
Finally, what’s the relevance of Paul for my students who aren’t religious or who come from religious traditions other than Christianity? Is there anything in Paul’s thought that they can find valuable?
In Luke’s Gospel the two disciples who traveled to Emmaus didn’t recognize Jesus until they saw him through the breaking of the bread. For many Christians, this is how Jesus is seen and heard every week. This pandemic has taken away that experience away from them. Instead, we’re left with something closer to Mark’s open-ended account of the Resurrection. We’re trembling with fear. We don’t understand what’s happening. We haven’t experienced closure.
The Evangelist Matthew reminds us in this time that Jesus’ final words include the promise that he’ll be with us always, even to the end of the age. The Evangelist John reminds us that like Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles, we can hear the Resurrected One’s voice if we listen as we’re addressed by name.
In our sacred Scriptures we have four similar but unique interpretations of the Resurrection. This year it’s important to remember that; it’s important to remember that we don’t experience the risen Lord the same; it’s important that even our individual experiences of Easter can change.
This Easter isn’t ruined. It’s different. It’ll add new texture to your understanding of the event and it’s meaning. Next year we’ll break bread again. But this year we experience fear and trembling, we hope for the the divine presence, and we listen for the Voice
Last week I had my students work their way through the Passion Narratives using a grid to compare and contrast the four canonical Gospels’ presentation of these events. My aim was to show that the tradition highlights some thing consistently. This doesn’t necessarily verify their historicity (e.g., Barabbas appears in each Gospel) but it does show what traditions tended to have staying power from Mark’s Gospel to Matthew’s and to Luke’s. If, like me, you think the Fourth Evangelist knew of the Synoptics, then again anything that makes it into that Gospel should be included in what I’m saying.
So, what appears to be important across the Gospels? First, Judas’ role as the betrayer is mentioned in each one. Second, Peter’s denial of Jesus is too. Third, Jesus appears before Pontius Pilate every time. Fourth, during his arrest, a disciple always takes out his sword and starts swinging to defend Jesus. Fifth, Jesus is always taken to ‘Golgotha’ or ‘the Place of the Skull’. Sixth, he’s always offered something to drink. Seventh, he’s always mocked as ‘the King of the Jews’. Seventh, there are always women disciples present with him, even if at a bit of a distance. Eighth, Joseph (of Arimathea) is the one to acquire the body in each rendition.
Why are these eight things standard to the story? Is it incidental? Is there a theme I’m missing?
Equally interesting is when an Evangelists inserts their own singularly unique claims. Matthew’s the only one who mentions that that Pilate washed his hands; that bodies emerged from tombs when Jesus died; that guards were placed at Jesus’ tomb. Luke’s the only one who claims that Jesus healed the lopped off ear of the High Priest’s servant; that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod Antipas; that Jesus stopped on his way to the cross to warn women of Jerusalem’s fate; that only one of the men crucified with Jesus mocked him while the other defended Jesus and was offered a place in Paradise; that Jesus breathed a final breath. John’s the only one who has the people coming to arrest Jesus fall to the ground when Jesus self-identifies; who has Jesus and Pilate discussing the nature of power and truth in-depth; that the sign above Jesus’ head was written in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin; that Jesus’ legs weren’t broken; that there was a male disciple present who would become the adoptive son of Jesus’ mother.
It’s these little differences that make the juxtaposition interesting. Why does Matthew need guards? Why does Luke bring Herod Antipas into the story? Why is ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ at the foot of the cross?
I’ve tried to teach my students to read the Bible using different lenses. They can ask the questions historians might ask. They can ask the questions a literary critic might ask. They can ask the questions a philosopher or theologian might ask. There’s many more lenses they can use. I hope they encounter them over a lifetime as they continue to engage these texts in all their complexity. For more than half of my life I’ve been reading these texts seriously and I can say that it’s these details, this design, that keeps me coming back over and over again.
We hear this narrative yearly, at least. We hear it alluded to more often than that: ‘On the night that he was betrayed…’ But we hear it from different perspectives. This is the first time I’ve heard it during a pandemic. What does this do to my hearing of this story?
It emphasizes our agnosticism toward the future. Most of us didn’t know we’d be in this situation on April 9th, 2020. While there were a few people who could make decision that could’ve impacted the trajectory of this pandemic (see ‘South Korea’) most of us aren’t those people. We can respond only to the world as it unfolds before us.
This experience highlights the disciples place in the Maundy Thursday tradition. Jesus seems to have expected something. Each Evangelist gives Jesus more or less of an understanding of his fate. But in the Gospels, his disciples seems uniformly unaware. Tragedy is coming. They don’t know it. They can do nothing to stop it.
This night the disciples will be shown their inability to control things. This night most of us recognize this helplessness in ourselves. We’d like to be the masters of our destinies but we’re not. Personally, this Maundy Thursday preaches that message as loud and as clear as it ever could.
But there’s one thing we can control. Jesus commands us to do so. We’re told to love one another and he loves us. In our powerlessness, we can do something powerful; we’re commanded to do something powerful: love one another. We see this in the work of our medical professionals but they’re not alone. We can all contribute in some way for we can all love in some way.
Maundy Thursday icon of Jesus washing the feet of St. Peter
The blog of Brian LePort 