Genesis 2:4-9,16-25
The Daily Office
In the Daily Office lectionary, Chapter 1 of Genesis was read yesterday. So today we pick up chapter 2, and will continue reading Genesis until the death of Abraham, shortly before Lent. I could do what I normally do, and turn a microscope on one verse, which would do not justice to the grandness of the vision presented here. But to speak of that vision means that I can't avoid the question: "Is any of this actually true, or is it just a myth?" After all, many of the stories in the first nine chapters, from the Creation to the Flood, bear more than a passing resemblance to other stories of creation in the ancient Near East.
I believe that the answer to the question above is that, yes, absolutely, Genesis is true. The truths of this book are far greater than those of isolated "facts," or of "history" understood as the mundane who, what, when and where. They are literally "prehistoric." Genesis deals with the most basic questions of our existence: Who are we? How did we get here? Why are we so screwed up? And how do we start to get out of this mess? Since you and I have known no other reality, then where the change occurred from original blessing to original sin cannot be documented by any scientific or historical method.
The creation myths with which Genesis competed presumed that there was no original blessing; but that the universe was conceived in the chaotic collision of divine forces, with human beings the subject of divine whims. But the children of Israel had a "prehistoric" experience of the joy of creation and their Creator which convinced them that they were not subject to divine whim, but divine love. As we move into the stories of tribes and patriarchs and matriarchs, we will begin to move into the realm of history. But the truth of the story of our creation is as true today as it was long, long ago.
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