Creativity: Transcending Genre, The Book of Genesis

One of the most creative moves ever done is found 

in the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis.  

This post will not in any way argue the finer points of the narrative there, but try to show how the author creatively uses the story of how God made the universe to emphasize a theological point. Whatever you believe the Book of Genesis means, the strategy of the author in the first part of it is a brilliant, flashy creative move—in the story about the Earth’s creation.

Whether we’re religious or not, a Jew or Christian or something else, most people are familiar with the opening lines of the Bible:  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The simplicity and beauty of that line is well known, but there was a strategy behind it. It was not merely for the sake of simplicity.

The sole character in that first sentence is God. He created the heavens and the earth—the sky and the land. Period. That’s it. This is where the creativity comes on.

What creativity? The writer begins with something that would have been startling in that day and age. When he made the heavens and the earth, God didn’t have to fight anybody. He did it with no help and encountered no opposition. This stood in contradistinction with most of the other creation stories of the day.

Usually a deity had to fight to create the universe—or to get control of a pre-existing universe that had simply made itself by arising out of some primal chaos. Zeus and the Olympian gods had to fight the Titans, a race of older gods led by Kronos, to get sovereignty over the earth. Once he had killed or imprisoned them, he and his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, divided the spoils and set up their various realms. In Babylonian mythology, Apsu and Tiamat bring into being the Earth and everything connected with it. Soon, however, one of their children, Ea, rebels and eventually kills Apsu. Ea marries and fathers Marduk, the chief Babylonian god. Conflict seems to go along with making a world.

Apsu

Not for the God in the Hebrew scriptures. He doesn’t have to fight anyone. He doesn’t have children who will rise up against him. It’s an easy, smooth, motionless action to make a universe. It involves no conflict, no fighting. God has no rivals, no opponents. This implies, of course, the Hebrew belief that their God was in a class by himself, not one deity among many.

The author accomplishes this through a simple, straightforward text that charms by its eloquence. He does not boast about his (or her) God being more powerful than other deities. God makes heaven and the earth by speaking them into being. By the simplicity of his discourse, the author powerfully, and creatively, drives home his theological point.

The Book of Genesis was written probably around 4000 years ago. The techniques of creativity don’t change.