In the beginning, God created skies and earth.
Thanks for visiting today. I pray you are well and happy.
Consider setting. Setting is everything. Setting is space and time in a story.
The place and time of a man or woman, an invention or discovery, a social transformation or disaster, and a story or poem are the context that underlies and influences everything that is imagined, thought, conceived, or written within that space and time.
I like to include Genesis 1:1 at the top of my posts not only because it is a lovely verse, but the faith embedded within it is the context for what is and what is not in the Bible.
On the one hand, Genesis 1:1 must be true if our faith is to move on for another one thousand years.
On the other hand, if we do not boldly and with faith look into the subtext of Genesis 1:1, with our telescopes and microscopes and scientific method, our faith is doomed to perish as another quaint superstition.
I love God. I believe in God. I know this is possible. I do it everyday and so do millions of other believers. I am not believing in an invisible man, or an invisible friend, or any other silliness. I ground my faith in One beyond all silliness.
Genesis 1:1 is the context of everything in the Bible. It says that God created everything.
Notice, that “everything” is expressed as skies and earth.
To ancient people, skies and earth were all there was. Forget about outer space. Stars were lights, small enough to fit into a god’s hand, not suns. And they could fall from the sky.
The concept of an atmosphere did not exist. There was no ozone layer or magnetic field. There was no three days to travel to the moon and three to return safely.
The sky was where god and god’s heavenly host dwelled. It was already inhabited before the elohim began shaping earth.
The sky was heaven, literally, and it was not far away. It was shaped like a dome, or the dome we see when we look at it today. Above it was a celestial ocean. Above the ocean was the heavenly realm where the elohim dwelled.
The sky had windows that opened so the heavenly ocean fell as rain. It is silly for modern people to offer as a criticism of creationism the notion that our sun above a huge ocean of water would burn up the planet.
In the ancient world view, the sun was below the body of water.
It moved in the heavens among those little lights called stars and that other big night light called moon.
The word for sky like the word for god in this verse is plural. Samayim is the word for heaven. Compare that to Elohim, the word for God in Genesis 1:1.
Samayim has been translated as firmament, vault, arch, heaven, heavens, skies, and sky.
The sky was as close as it appears to us today. Sky dwellers could walk down a staircase to earth. Jacob saw the staircase once in a dream.
We are not talking light years here. The heavens were so close that humans began building a tower just to be there. Rockets were millennia away from being imagined let alone built.
As the humans got closer, the heaven dwellers got nervous. Do you blame them? I imagine they did not want their property value to go down as the humans took up residence.
A few humans were so special they could live in heaven. Enoch, presumably, was one. A chariot was sent down to pick up Elijah.
Occasionally, messengers are sent down to earth to give warnings. God Himself visited Abraham to haggle over who would live or die in a city God was bound and determined to destroy.
Jesus was sent down to earth. He simply flew back up while some of his disciples watched him.
He took his seat next to God, that is, on God’s right side. I've often wondered who sat on God’s left side? Not the Holy Spirit. He dwells on earth as God’s presence with us.
All that language comes out of a world view that no longer exists.
So how does our generation, and the ones following us, believe within the context of a cosmos more vast, infinite, and complex than the one imagined in Genesis 1:1?
Genesis 1:1 is the context of everything in the Bible. It says that God created everything.
Notice, that “everything” is expressed as skies and earth.
To ancient people, skies and earth were all there was. Forget about outer space. Stars were lights, small enough to fit into a god’s hand, not suns. And they could fall from the sky.
The concept of an atmosphere did not exist. There was no ozone layer or magnetic field. There was no three days to travel to the moon and three to return safely.
The sky was where god and god’s heavenly host dwelled. It was already inhabited before the elohim began shaping earth.
The sky was heaven, literally, and it was not far away. It was shaped like a dome, or the dome we see when we look at it today. Above it was a celestial ocean. Above the ocean was the heavenly realm where the elohim dwelled.
The sky had windows that opened so the heavenly ocean fell as rain. It is silly for modern people to offer as a criticism of creationism the notion that our sun above a huge ocean of water would burn up the planet.
In the ancient world view, the sun was below the body of water.
It moved in the heavens among those little lights called stars and that other big night light called moon.
The word for sky like the word for god in this verse is plural. Samayim is the word for heaven. Compare that to Elohim, the word for God in Genesis 1:1.
Samayim has been translated as firmament, vault, arch, heaven, heavens, skies, and sky.
The sky was as close as it appears to us today. Sky dwellers could walk down a staircase to earth. Jacob saw the staircase once in a dream.
We are not talking light years here. The heavens were so close that humans began building a tower just to be there. Rockets were millennia away from being imagined let alone built.
As the humans got closer, the heaven dwellers got nervous. Do you blame them? I imagine they did not want their property value to go down as the humans took up residence.
A few humans were so special they could live in heaven. Enoch, presumably, was one. A chariot was sent down to pick up Elijah.
Occasionally, messengers are sent down to earth to give warnings. God Himself visited Abraham to haggle over who would live or die in a city God was bound and determined to destroy.
Jesus was sent down to earth. He simply flew back up while some of his disciples watched him.
He took his seat next to God, that is, on God’s right side. I've often wondered who sat on God’s left side? Not the Holy Spirit. He dwells on earth as God’s presence with us.
All that language comes out of a world view that no longer exists.
So how does our generation, and the ones following us, believe within the context of a cosmos more vast, infinite, and complex than the one imagined in Genesis 1:1?
Blessings…
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