COMPREHENDING GENESIS 1

 

The beginner reader of the Bible or someone who fortuitously decides to read it may encounter certain difficulties right on its first page. How to understand, for example, that God created the universe in only six days? And how can light have been created on the first day if the celestial bodies that radiate it only appeared on the fourth day?  These and other questions can discourage the reader who has not yet been educated in the knowledge of divine Revelation.

It is understandable that a person of our day reads certain biblical passages and does not find meaning in them. This is because they go to the sacred text with the lenses of the world of their time. Their thinking is formatted with the presuppositions of a scientific and technological society, very different from that for which the biblical texts were written. Genesis 1 is an ancient text that can be about 3,500 years old and was destined to a community of Hebrew slaves in ancient Egypt.

The desires and expectations of the primitive readers and the present ones before the Scriptures are very different. Today we are astonished by the statement that God created everything in just six days, since we have a collection of scientific knowledge that attests to the existence of the earth and the universe in a remote period of time. Let's go to Genesis 1 with this conflict, because it is something that bothers us and its solution is important for our faith. Without realizing it, we do a scientific reading of that narrative.

Certainly the first readers of the first page of the Bible did different readings, with other longings and saw something much higher: God. Genesis first does not deal with Science. It does not bring details and proofs of how God created all things. That was not the author's intention. No doubt the creation of the world is a strong idea in Genesis 1 and today's man, full of science, easily realizes it. But from the perspective of the Hebrews, slaves in Egypt, was this the vision they had of this text?

Note that the Bible begins with God: "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". This statement shows that He is distinct from creation, different from the gods of the time when the Scriptures began to be written. The Egyptians, for example, worshipped the sun, the river Nile and certain animals as gods. But no nation knew YAHWEH. So the first lines of the Bible had a comforting meaning for the Hebrews, for they showed a God who is above all others. And that God was their deliverer. So the emphasis on the first page of the Bible is not on Creation or how it was created, but on presenting the true God, the Creator. The most important and mysterious element of this text is not Creation, but the one who created it.

Antônio Maia – M.Div.

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