HRS

Genesis takes the reader to the beginning of the world. The beautiful opening words of Genesis 1:1-2 set the stage for the biblical story. You might be surprised to learn that the very first verse in the Bible, which is commonly translated as "In the beginning" could be rendered in several ways. If you looked a dozen English translations, you'll notice slight variations. For instance: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (King James Version) "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth... " (New Revised Standard Version) "When God began to create heaven and earth..." (Jerusalem Publication Society) "At the first God made the heaven and the earth." (Bible in Basic English) "In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth..." (Young's Literal Translation) "In a beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Another possibility) These sorts of fascinating interpretive issues abound in the Bible. Although one wouldn't be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various renderings without some working knowledge of Hebrew grammar and basic linguistic principles, I'll flag a few interesting interpretive issues along the way. Some of these translation decisions make significant differences in how the text is understood in English, though most are only a matter of nuance. Genesis 1:1 is most often translated as "In the beginning [of time]." Most translators opt for this with the assumption that Genesis 1 is already pregnant with the theological idea known as creatio ex nihilo (Latin for "creation out of nothing"). This doctrinal formulation, which gets articulated centuries later, attempts to preserve the ontological "Otherness" of God as the only eternally existing being who both precedes and generates all things. The distinction between Creator and creature becomes fundamental to both Jewish and Christian traditions and governs much of their theological and ethical reasoning. If we read the Genesis creation account against the historical and cultural backdrop of the ANE, however, the creative act of God is first and foremost an act of "separating" and "ordering" pre-existing cosmic stuff (like the primordial waters), rather than creating something out of nothing. This is not to say that biblical writers didn't think God created the cosmic stuff in the first place. They may have; they may have not.But the question of the ultimate First Cause (to borrow Aristotelian idea) is simply not answered in Genesis 1. What in the world was God creating? If you tried to draw the universe as described in Genesis 1, you'll quickly realize that this is not a description of the world as we know it. That's because the ancients had a distinct cosmology that is very different from our own scientific one. Their picture of the cosmos looks more like this:

Genesis takes the reader to the beginning of the world. The beautiful opening words of Genesis 1:1-2 set the stage for the biblical story. You might be surprised to learn that the very first verse in the Bible, which is commonly translated as "In the beginning" could be rendered in several ways. If you looked a dozen English translations, you'll notice slight variations. For instance: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (King James Version) "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth... " (New Revised Standard Version) "When God began to create heaven and earth..." (Jerusalem Publication Society) "At the first God made the heaven and the earth." (Bible in Basic English) "In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth..." (Young's Literal Translation) "In a beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Another possibility) What in the world was God creating? If you tried to draw the universe as described in Genesis 1, you'll quickly realize that this is not a description of the world as we know it. That's because the ancients had a distinct cosmology that is very different from our own scientific one. Their picture of the cosmos looks more like this:

The first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—are collectively known as the Torah ("instruction, teaching, law") in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (pente- "five" + teuchos "scrolls") in Greek. Another traditional designation is the Five Books of Moses, since Moses is the most prominent character in the Pentateuch (though he doesn't actually appear until the book of Exodus). We'll spend most time on the Torah in this course both because it's among the lengthiest portions of the Hebrew Bible and because they provide the foundational mythical-historical narrative for Jews and Christians. Ancient Jews (including earliest Christians who were virtually all Jews) cherished different collections of texts and stories, maintained different attitudes towards the Jerusalem Temple and the priesthood, and engaged in different rituals and devotional practices. Yet, they all seemed to have commonly affirmed the authority of the Torah. Although we don't know exactly when and where the Pentateuch was canonized (i.e., officially recognized as scriptural) and authoritative, there is no doubt that it was a protracted process. Scholars used to posit the stabilization of the Torah by the Persian period in the late 6th century BCE—around the time of Ezra-Nehemiah—but we're less sure about that now. Besides, precisely what the collection of texts actually looked like is still far from certain. The Torah begins with a creation story and then ends with the death of Moses at the eastern edge of Jordan before People Israel enter Canaan, the Promised Land. There's a lot that happens in between, but we can discern an overarching narrative movement toward the Promised Land with a key intermission at Mount Sinai in the Torah. The divine revelation at Mt. Sinai (= Sinaitic revelation) is one of the central events in the story. Here's a bird's-eye view of the Pentateuchal narrative movement:

Yahwist (J): ca. 9-10th c. BCE): Narrative from Southern Kingdom Elohist (E): ca. 8th c. BCE): Narrative from Northern Kingdom Deuteronomistic (D): ca. mid-6th to 7th c. BCE): Deuteronomy + Joshua-2 Kings Priestly Writings (P): ca. 6th c. BCE): Parts of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, but presumably the last editors, so their revision is interspersed throughout the HB

The traditional view holds that Moses composed the Pentateuch (and that the rest were composed by particular figures mentioned in that book, e.g., The books of Samuel by Samuel; the book of Ezra by Ezra; and so forth). This view (= Mosaic authorship) was the standard view until the European Enlightenment. Modern scholarly consensus, however, is that the Bible was composed, redacted (= edited), and transmitted by a host of figures over a long period of time. Here are the four main sources that were combined and reworked into the Pentateuch. Yahwist (J): ca. 9-10th c. BCE): Narrative from Southern Kingdom Elohist (E): ca. 8th c. BCE): Narrative from Northern Kingdom Deuteronomistic (D): ca. mid-6th to 7th c. BCE): Deuteronomy + Joshua-2 Kings Priestly Writings (P): ca. 6th c. BCE): Parts of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, but presumably the last editors, so their revision is interspersed throughout the HB By "sources" scholars mean pre-existing materials—whether oral or written, long or short, in Hebrew or other Semitic languages—which different groups of scribes used to put the Pentateuch together. These sources are hypothetical, and we are in possession of no physical manuscripts (however fragmentary) to which we can point. And not all scholars agree that there were these particular sources. European scholarship tends to contest the existence of a separate E(lohist) source (so they might write J/E instead of J, E). Others prefer to speak in terms of "layers" of redactional activity that was repeated over several centuries, rather sources that were stitched together. Others place a greater emphasis on the creative power of just a few writers and redactors. Nevertheless, the Hebrew Bible points to how texts were "built" in the ancient Near East. Early Jewish scribes used pre-existing materials that were seen as authoritative and carefully reworked them. But it's also clear that they felt constrained by their attitudes—you could say, reverence—toward their source materials, so they didn't feel quite as free to "clean up" some of the materials as one might have expected. So, the Pentateuch is a remarkable document that maintains a basic narrative flow but also evidences highly unusual features precisely because it's a library of religious texts that were composed, edited, copied, and transmitted by several generations of scribes from various historical period and sociocultural contexts.

Yahwist (J): ca. 9-10th c. BCE): Narrative from Southern Kingdom Elohist (E): ca. 8th c. BCE): Narrative from Northern Kingdom Deuteronomistic (D): ca. mid-6th to 7th c. BCE): Deuteronomy + Joshua-2 Kings Priestly Writings (P): ca. 6th c. BCE): Parts of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, but presumably the last editors, so their revision is interspersed throughout the HB