The Lost World of Adam and Eve (6 page)

Having completed our survey of the six days, we find that most have no material objects produced. The only hint that materiality may be of interest comes in the use of the verb
ʿ
āśâ
. Even in some of the verses where a contemporary reader could assume that use, the Israelites are not thinking about that which is material. I have further suggested that the Hebrew verb itself is overparticularized when analyzed as inherently material in nature or only in cases of direct material causation.

At the same time, we have seen that the text is pervaded by an interest in order and function. Not only is this evident in the text of Genesis; it is also the primary way that cosmologies in the ancient world talk about origins. It is the dominant way that people think about existence and origins in the ancient world. It is also arguably a more significant theological assertion to make, and one that all people everywhere can understand regardless of the level of their scientific sophistication. If we ask, why can’t it be both material and functional?, the answer is clear enough: it could be, but the material cannot be considered a default interpretation; it must be proved. If the reports of day after day in the text fail to relate God creating material objects, we have to be willing to set aside the culturally determined presupposition that origin accounts are essentially material.

It is interesting that even those who have thought of Genesis 1 as an account of material origins have noted the repeated reference to the efficacy of the spoken word. Some researchers have gone so far as to investigate other ancient cosmologies to conclude that, with the exception of one Egyptian text (the Memphite Theology), creation is never carried out by the spoken word of deity. Unfortunately, this offers too narrow a view. Pervasive throughout the ancient Near East is the idea that the gods issue decrees that determine the destinies of everything in creation (whether initially or on a year-by-year basis).
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Though many ancient Near Eastern texts talk about creation as functional in nature,
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a brief look at the
Instruction of Merikare
will give the reader a good example:

Here, the text clearly conveys the idea that the god orders the cosmos to function on behalf of people in his image.

In conclusion, I have discovered over the years of presenting this material that people struggle to understand the whole idea of an origins account that is all about functions, role and order rather than about material objects. After all, when we speak only in abstractions (e.g., functional, material), are we not just going back to modern categories? It is therefore desirable to explain by use of an analogy.

When Americans need to move to a new city, they have to seek out a new residence. As a family investigates one location after another, some members of the family might examine the physical structure of the house. Roof, foundation, electricity, plumbing, furnace and general condition are all of immense importance. At the same time, others in the family may be assessing how the house will serve as a home. Domestic traffic patterns and open design are only the beginning. Which room will be used in which way? Where will the furniture fit? The kids are most likely to run upstairs to figure out which rooms will be theirs. In this way, some are considering the house; the others are considering the home.
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In the same manner, we could talk about the origins of the house or the origins of the home. When students come over for dinner, they may ask us about the place where we live. They do not want to know about the plumbing or the condition of the roof. They generally do not care about when or how the house was built. They are asking about when and how it became our home.
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I have proposed that in the ancient world people were far more interested in the origins of the home than in the origins of the house. It is a question of which story to tell. They were not interested in how the material objects of the house came into being—God did it and that was enough for them.
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Of much more interest to them was how this house (the cosmos) had become a home for humans but even more importantly how God had made it his own home. The seven-day origins account in Genesis is a “home story”; it is not a “house story.” It is a different sort of origins story than we expect in our modern world, but it is not difficult to understand why it should be important.

In John 14:2-3 Jesus says:

He is talking about the future, but he is also referencing what he has done in the past. The cosmos was prepared as a place for us with a very specific purpose in mind: that we may be where he is. This has always been God’s plan. It is God’s presence in the cosmos that is worthy of note. By his presence, he has turned the cosmos into sacred space. That concept will be developed in the next chapter.

Proposition 4

In Genesis 1, God Orders the Cosmos as Sacred Space

Genesis 1:1–2:3 contains a seven-day account of origins, not a six-day account. Our frequent reference to a six-day account is at least in part the result of not knowing what to do with the seventh day. What does God resting have to do with creation? Why would God need to rest anyway? What would it mean for God to rest? Perhaps one of the main reasons we face this conundrum is that we have assumed that the account is a material account, and nothing material takes place on day seven. In contrast, I maintain that even though people are the climax of the six days, day seven is the climax of this origins account. In fact, it is the purpose of this origins account, and the other six days do not achieve their full meaning without it. Rest is the objective of creation.

At the end of the last chapter, I offered the illustration contrasting the house and home. We can begin to understand better when we push that analogy to the next level. When a family finally chooses a house to make their home, they pack up all their belongings and move to their new location. On that first rather depressing day, their house is filled with unopened boxes and furniture sitting all over the place. There is no order; the
house
is functioning well enough (plumbing, electricity, roof, foundation), but there is no functioning
home.
So the family begins to spend time, day after day, arranging the furniture, unpacking the boxes, ordering their home. They begin to take stock of all that has been provided for them in the house to help make it a comfortable and functional home.

Why are they ordering their home? For what purpose? That sounds like a silly question. When the task of unpacking is done, they expect to live there. They are not doing all of that work just so they can take a nap when it is done. Nor are they expecting to get it all set up and then leave. They are doing all of this so that they can reside there. When they
rest
from all the ordering work they have done, they do so not by
relaxing
but by functioning in this ordered space. Even as they
cease
the ordering activity (which would be represented by the Hebrew root
šbt
), they begin to enjoy this established equilibrium of order (which would be represented by the Hebrew word
nw
ḥ
,
“rested”; e.g., in Ex 20:11).
Šbt
is the transition;
nw
ḥ
is the purpose. This concept can be understood both through an analysis of the theology of rest in the Bible and through an analysis of divine rest in the ancient world.

Theology of Rest in the Bible

When God tells the Israelites that he is going to give them rest (
nw
ḥ
) from their enemies (Deut 12:10; Josh 1:13; 21:44; 2 Sam 7:1; 1 Kings 5:4), he is not talking about sleep, relaxation or leisure time. The rest that he offers his people refers to freedom from invasion and conflict so that they can live at peace and conduct their daily lives without interruption. It refers to achieving a state of order in society. Such rest is the goal of all the ordering activities that the Israelites are undertaking to secure their place in the land.

When Jesus invites people to “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28), he is not offering a nap or leisure time. He is inviting people to participate in the ordered kingdom of God, where, even though they have a yoke, they will find rest. Furthermore, when the author of Hebrews refers to the rest that remains for the people of God (Heb 4:10-11), he is not referring to relaxation but to security and order in the kingdom of God.

In light of this usage, we can discern that resting pertains to the security and stability found in the equilibrium of an ordered system. When God rests on the seventh day, he is taking up his residence in the ordered system that he has brought about in the previous six days. It is not something that he does only on the seventh day; it is what he does every day thereafter. Furthermore, his rest is not just a matter of having a place of residence—he is exercising his control over this ordered system where he intends to relate to people whom he has placed there and for whom he has made the system function. It is his place of residence, it is a place for relationship, but, beyond those, it is also a place of his rule. Note Psalm 132:7-8, where the temple is identified both as God’s dwelling place and as his resting place. Psalm 132:14 goes on to identify this resting place as the place where he sits “enthroned.”
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The temple account in Ezekiel 40–48 also identifies this element clearly: “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever” (Ezek 43:7).

When Jesus talks about the Sabbath, he makes statements that seem unrelated to rest if we think of it in terms of relaxation. In Matthew 12:8, he is the Lord of the Sabbath. When we realize that the Sabbath has to do with participating in God’s ordered system (rather than promoting our own activities as those that bring us order), we can understand how Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. Throughout his controversies with the Pharisees, Jesus insisted that it was never a violation of the Sabbath to do the work of God on that day. Indeed, he noted that God is continually working (Jn 5:17). The Sabbath is most truly honored when we participate in the work of God (see Is 58:13-14). The work we desist from is that which represents our own attempts to bring our own order to our lives.
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It is to resist our self-interest, our self-sufficiency and our sense of self-reliance.

Ancient Near Eastern Concept of Divine Rest

It would not have been difficult for a reader from anywhere in the ancient Near East to take one quick look at the seven-day account and draw the conclusion that it was a temple story.
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That is because they knew something about the temples in the ancient world that is foreign to us. Divine rest in ancient temples was not a matter of simply residence. As we noted in Psalm 132, the temple was the center of God’s rule. In the ancient world, the temple was the command center of the cosmos—it was the control room from where the god maintained order, made decrees and exercised sovereignty. Temple-building accounts often accompanied cosmologies because after the god had established order (the focus of cosmologies in the ancient world), he took control of that ordered system. This is the element that we are sadly missing when we read the Genesis account. God has ordered the cosmos with the purpose of taking up his residence in it and ruling over it. Day seven is the reason for days one through six. It is the fulfillment of God’s purpose.

In the ancient world, a god’s place in his temple is established so that people can relate to him by meeting his needs (ritually). That is not the case in Israel, where God has no needs. He wants to relate to his people in an entirely different way. Despite this difference, it is the temple that remains the focus of this relationship as elsewhere in the ancient world. When God entered the temple, he established sacred space. Sacred space is the result of divine presence and serves as the center and source of order in the cosmos. In this “home story,” God is not only making a home for people; he is making a home for himself, though he has no need of a home for himself. If God does not rest in this ordered space, the six days are without their guiding purpose. The cosmos is not just a house; it is a home.

These ideas are supported not only by biblical theology, by lexical semantics and by comparative study with the ancient Near East; they are supported by the connection to a seven-day period. If this cosmic origins story has to do with the initiation of the cosmos as sacred space, then we should inquire as to how sacred space is typically initiated in the Bible and the ancient world when a temple is involved.

Solomon spent seven years building the house to be used as the temple of God in Jerusalem. When the house was complete, however, all that existed was a structure, not a temple. It was ready to be a temple, but it was not yet functioning like a temple, and God was not dwelling in it. Consequently the temple did not exist even though the structure did. What constituted the transition from a structure that was ready to be a temple to an actual functioning temple? How did the house become a home? This is an important question because there is a comparison to be drawn if Genesis 1 is indeed a temple text.