Is Genesis 1 Really About How the World Was Made? — Transcript

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1. 0:00(logo chiming)
2. 0:07- [Jon] The first book in the Bible is called Genesis.
3. 0:10- [Tim] And we're gonna look closely
4. 0:11at the first page of the book of Genesis.
5. 0:14It's a carefully crafted narrative
6. 0:15about God creating and ordering the whole cosmos.
7. 0:20- [Jon] Okay, let's check it out.
8. 0:21Now, the opening line of the whole Bible is:
9. 0:24"In the beginning
10. 0:25God created the skies and the land."
11. 0:27- [Tim] Now your Bible translation might say,
12. 0:29"The heavens and the earth."
13. 0:31In Biblical Hebrew,
14. 0:32the word for "heaven" refers simply to "the sky above."
15. 0:35And the word for "earth" does not mean "globe,"
16. 0:38but rather "the land."
17. 0:39- [Jon] The ground below us.
18. 0:41- [Tim] Right. This line is summarizing
19. 0:43what's going to happen in the following narrative,
20. 0:46which starts in the next line.
21. 0:48- [Jon] And it reads:
22. 0:49"Now the land was wild and waste."
23. 0:52- [Tim] This phrase rhymes in Hebrew.
24. 0:54"The land was tohu va-vohu,"
25. 0:57which means "unordered and uninhabited."
26. 1:00This is the ancient way of talking
27. 1:01about the pre-creation state,
28. 1:03what we might call "nothingness."
29. 1:06For the biblical authors,
30. 1:07non-existence means "having no purpose and no order."
31. 1:12And the next line uses another image
32. 1:14to say the same thing.
33. 1:15- [Jon] "And darkness was
34. 1:17on the face of the deep abyss."
35. 1:19What's the deep abyss?
36. 1:21- [Tim] Yeah, it's a dark, chaotic ocean.
37. 1:24It's another common way the ancients described
38. 1:26the non-reality that preceded creation.
39. 1:29Now, here's where things start to get interesting,
40. 1:32because in the midst of those dark waters,
41. 1:34God is present.
42. 1:35- [Jon] "And the spirit of God was hovering
43. 1:37over the face of the waters."
44. 1:39- [Tim] The Hebrew word for God's spirit is "ruach,"
45. 1:42which can refer to wind or breath,
46. 1:44or God's invisible presence.
47. 1:47- [Jon] So you can't see it,
48. 1:47but God is present in the darkness,
49. 1:50ready to bring order so that life can flourish.
50. 1:52- [Tim] Yes. And this ordering happens
51. 1:54in a series of six days.
52. 1:57- [Jon] Each day begins with the phrase,
53. 1:58"And God said,"
54. 2:00and then ends with the phrase,
55. 2:02"and there was evening and morning."
56. 2:04- [Tim] Yeah, every day addresses
57. 2:06those problems introduced in verse 2,
58. 2:08that there's no order and no inhabitants.
59. 2:11So on days one through three,
60. 2:12God splits apart that unordered darkness
61. 2:15into three ordered realms.
62. 2:17Then, on days four through six,
63. 2:19God fills the uninhabited wasteland with creatures.
64. 2:23- [Jon] Interesting. Let's see how that works.
65. 2:24- [Tim] Okay. So the first realm of order
66. 2:27begins with light on day one.
67. 2:29- [Jon] Ah, yes. "Let there be light."
68. 2:31- [Tim] This is God's own glorious light
69. 2:33that fills and contains the darkness.
70. 2:36As he separates day from night,
71. 2:38God's establishing the order of time.
72. 2:41- [Jon] Okay. And then on day two,
73. 2:43"Let there be a vault between the waters
74. 2:45to separate water from water."
75. 2:47What's the vault?
76. 2:48- [Tim] In the ancient culture
77. 2:49of the biblical authors,
78. 2:51the sky was perceived as a solid dome
79. 2:53that holds back waters.
80. 2:55God's depicted here as splitting the chaos waters
81. 2:58in half, above and below,
82. 3:00which creates the realms of the sky and the seas.
83. 3:04- [Jon] And then on day three,
84. 3:05"Let the waters under the sky
85. 3:07be gathered into one place,
86. 3:09and let dry ground appear."
87. 3:10- [Tim] God is establishing the realm of the land,
88. 3:13and it emerges out of the chaotic waters.
89. 3:16And then there's a bonus creative act on day three,
90. 3:19God invites plants and fruit trees with seed
91. 3:22to emerge out of the land.
92. 3:24- [Jon] Okay. So we've got the realms of time,
93. 3:26the realm of the sky and the seas,
94. 3:28and the land.
95. 3:29And they all have order.
96. 3:31- [Tim] Right.
97. 3:32Now, it's time to go back and fill these realms
98. 3:34of days one through three with inhabitants.
99. 3:37And this is what happens on days four through six.
100. 3:39- [Jon] So on day four,
101. 3:41"Let there be lights in the vaults of the sky."
102. 3:44- [Tim] God installs these lights,
103. 3:46the sun, moon, and stars,
104. 3:47as signs and symbols that reflect God's own light.
105. 3:51He gives them his own royal power to separate day and night.
106. 3:55- [Jon] Then on day five,
107. 3:56"Let the waters swarm with living creatures
108. 3:59and let birds fly above the land."
109. 4:01- [Tim] Yeah. These are the creatures
110. 4:03that live in the waters below,
111. 4:04and those that fly near the waters above.
112. 4:07- [Jon] Then finally, on day six,
113. 4:08"Let the land produce living creatures."
114. 4:11- [Tim] They emerge up out of the ground
115. 4:13to live on the land.
116. 4:15And then, matching that bonus act of creation on day three,
117. 4:19God makes a special land creature, human,
118. 4:22or in Hebrew,'adam.
119. 4:24Then, God provides all
120. 4:26of those plants from day three as abundant food.
121. 4:29- [Jon] Now over and over,
122. 4:30God says what he created was good.
123. 4:33But then, after making humans,
124. 4:35God says that it is very good.
125. 4:38- [Tim] Yes, humanity is the climax
126. 4:41of days one through six,
127. 4:42and their importance is explained
128. 4:44in the first poem in the Bible.
129. 4:46- [Jon] "So God created humanity in his own image.
130. 4:49In the image of God, he created them;
131. 4:51male and female, he created them."
132. 4:53- [Tim] So humans come up from the ground
133. 4:55like the other land creatures,
134. 4:57but they're also more.
135. 4:59They're God's image,
136. 5:00which means that, together, men and women
137. 5:03embody and represent the creator within his creation.
138. 5:07- [Jon] "God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful
139. 5:10and increase in number;
140. 5:12fill the earth and subdue it,
141. 5:13ruling over the creatures.'"
142. 5:15- [Tim] This is the purpose of being God's image,
143. 5:18to oversee creation as God's partners
144. 5:20and representatives in the world.
145. 5:22- [Jon] Very cool.
146. 5:23- [Tim] Now, after the six days,
147. 5:25we get a concluding line that links back
148. 5:27to the keywords of the opening line.
149. 5:29- [Jon] "And so were completed
150. 5:31the skies and the land and all their inhabitants."
151. 5:34- [Tim] Except there's one more day.
152. 5:36It stands outside the pattern of days one through six.
153. 5:39It's the big climax.
154. 5:40- [Jon] "And God completed on the seventh day
155. 5:42the work which he had done,
156. 5:44and he rested on the seventh day
157. 5:46from all the work which he had done,
158. 5:47and God blessed the seventh day and set it apart as holy."
159. 5:51- [Tim] So God rests on the seventh day.
160. 5:54This is a standard biblical image where God,
161. 5:56after ordering the cosmos,
162. 5:58comes to rest and dwell in his sacred space.
163. 6:02It's like the whole world is a holy temple
164. 6:05where God lives with his people.
165. 6:07- [Jon] Now that phrase,
166. 6:08"There was evening and morning,"
167. 6:10it doesn't appear on day seven.
168. 6:12- [Tim] That's right. The seventh day has no end.
169. 6:15That's because Genesis 1 is describing God's ideal vision
170. 6:18for the whole cosmos.
171. 6:21- [Jon] A place where God lives with his partners
172. 6:23to rule the world in harmony forever.
173. 6:26- [Tim] Yes, the seventh day is the goal of creation.
174. 6:29It's actually so important that the author
175. 6:31of Genesis 1 has woven the number seven
176. 6:33into every part of the story.
177. 6:35There are seven days of creation,
178. 6:37seven announcements that creation is good.
179. 6:40There are seven Hebrew words in the opening verse,
180. 6:42and then two times seven Hebrew words in Verse 2.
181. 6:46And then the statement about the seventh day
182. 6:48has three lines of seven words.
183. 6:51- [Jon] Wow. So the first page in the Bible is
184. 6:54doing way more than just telling us how the world was made.
185. 6:57- [Tim] Right. Genesis 1 has been designed
186. 6:59to show us that God's purpose is
187. 7:01to share creation with his images,
188. 7:04so they can rest and rule it with him forever.
189. 7:07And that purpose is what the rest
190. 7:09of the biblical drama is all about.
191. 7:11(papers flapping)
192. 7:12(white noise humming)
193. 7:28(pages rustling)