Greeting peacefulpete,
Apologies for the delay.
I can appreciate your reading of my work. You are coming from a different place and what I am putting forth is somewhat at variance with what you have already come to know. So let me see if I can bridge the divide.
You speak of “a demythologized version of the chaos motif in Genesis 1.” You say this motif is “pretty explicit and repeated throughout the Tanakh in back references to creation.” This is an understandable position. It is based on reading Genesis together with ancient near eastern creation accounts. It is a comparative religious reading of the text and is a common approach. You specifically note the Enuma Elish in your comments.
I am familiar with this approach. I am also familiar with the work of Tsumura whose scholarship serves as a balance to this approach. Tsumura writes,
There is a popular hypothesis that the Chaoskampf motif of Enuma elish, the battle between Tiamat and Marduk, is behind the biblical idea of creation, especially in the background of Gen 1:2, and hence it has been assumed that the basic pattern of the biblical creation motif is “order out of chaos,” as a result of the victory over the chaos waters, which symbolize the enemy of a creator god.
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There are still questions about the meanings of key expressions in Gen 1:2 such as tōhû wābōhû and tĕhôm, as well as the nature of the earth-waters relationship. B. S. Childs, who like many other scholars accepts a mythological background for these expressions, explains Gen 1:2 as describing “the mystery of a primordial threat against creation, uncreated without form and void, which God strove to overcome.” He had expressed this view in more theological terms a quarter of century earlier: “the Old Testament writer struggles to contrast the creation, not with a background of empty neutrality, but with an active chaos standing in opposition to the will of God. . . . The chaos is a reality rejected by God.”
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However, this view deserves scrutiny. Does Gen 1:2 describe a “watery chaos” that existed before creation? In other words, do the terms tōhû wābōhû and tĕhôm in v. 2 really signify a chaotic state of the earth in waters and hence “a primordial threat against creation”?
— David Toshio Tsumura, Creation and Destruction : A Reappraisal of the Chaoskampf Theory in the Old Testament (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 1–3.
Tsumura then undertakes a linguistic analysis of tōhû wābōhû and tĕhôm in Gen 1:2. After his analysis of the phrase tōhû wābōhû, Tsumura writes,
In light of the above, it would be very reasonable to understand the phrase tōhû wābōhû in Gen 1:2 as also describing a state of “desolation and emptiness,” though the context suggests that this was the initial state of the created earth rather than a state brought about as a result of God’s judgment on the earth or land (cf. Jer 4:23, Isa 34:11). In this regard, the earth that “was” (hāyĕtâ) tōhû wābōhû signifies the earth in a “bare” state, without vegetation and animals as well as without man. The author’s intention in describing the earth in its initial state as tōhû wābōhû was not to present the earth as “the terrible, eerie, deserted wilderness” but to introduce the earth as being “not yet” normal.
— Tsumura, Creation, 33.
After his analysis of the term tĕhôm, Tsumura writes,
There is no evidence that the term tĕhôm in Gen 1:2 is the depersonification of an original Canaanite deity, as Day assumes. The Hebrew term tĕhôm is simply a reflection of the common Semitic term *tihām- “ocean,” and there is no relation between the Genesis account and the so-called Chaoskampf mythology.
— Tsumura, Creation, 56–7.
So you may not know the work of Tsumura which serves as a balance to the position you take as axiomatic. If you do, then you no doubt have a contrary analysis to invalidate his findings or can refer me to someone who does. At the minimum, you can perhaps now understand why I do not take the Chaoskampf motif as self evidently working in the background in Genesis 1.
Moving on, you say, “The formless heaven and earth are not created they are assumed to exist primordially.” This statement is based on reading Gen 1:1 as a prepositional phrase. Holmstedt’s work shows this to be one of two possible options. So it is possible, but by no means the only opinion. My paper on bĕrēʾšît in Gen 1:1 specifically argues in support of the other option that this verse is an independent clause. You, like Holmstedt earlier, do not address the fact that both the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch understand the verse as an independent clause as does every ancient translation up to the 10th century. On the other hand, the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the ancient translations all support my position. So my view is not only possible, but is the one better supported. Additionally, the narrative structure I propose, if true, makes reading v. 1 as an independent clause the only opinion. So I am sorry to say, you have not eliminated “the heavens and the earth” from the count.
Moving on, you question why the two types of vegetation are only counted twice for day 3 and once for day 6. Sorry, but you have fundamentally misunderstood what I have laid out. The twenty-two works are works of creation. Thus the mention of vegetation in the provision of food is not counted at all. So when you say, "these are not two creative acts," I can only agree with you. It is the textual unit delineated by “and Elohim said” on day three (Gen 1:11–12) which corresponds to the textual unit delineated by “and Elohim said” on day six (Gen 1:29–31). If you look carefully at the diagram and the outline, you will see that the provision of food is in fact not numbered. Now consider the symmetrical arrangement which presents vegetation (day 3) as correspondent to land animals and humans (day 6) alone. This, as I said previously, contradicts v. 30 which also includes flying creatures (day 5) in the provision of food. My proposal thus yields a more sensible arrangement.
Moving on, you say that there are actually three kinds of plants created on day three. Sorry, but your reading of the text is wrong on this. The truth is as Sarna writes in his commentary, “vegetation Hebrew deshe’ is the generic term, which is subdivided into plants and fruit trees.” Thus the creation of “vegetation” (dešeʾ) is effected through the creation of the two types of vegetation according to the text: “seed sowing herbage” (ʿēśeb mazrîaʿ zeraʿ) and “fruit producing arborage” (ʿēṣ ʿōśè-pĕrî). These are the two works created during the second half of day three.
You continue, “notice in the summary of vs30 all three divisions of plants are lumped as 'herbs'.” Citing Gen 1:29–30 from the JPS translation in Sarna’s commentary, here is what I notice:
29 God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant (ʿēśeb) that is upon all the earth, and every tree (ʿēṣ) that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food. 30 And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath of life, [I give] all the green plants (yereq ʿēśeb) for food.” And it was so.
v. 29 states that the same two types of vegetation created in v. 12 are to be the food for mankind. This supports the view that two types of vegetation were created in vv. 11–2. As for the mention of yereq ʿēśeb in v. 30, there have long been problems in understanding the relationship of the two words here as Abraham Tal relates in his textual commentary for BHQ (I have transliterated where the text is in Hebrew):
yereq ʿēśeb The equal lexical value of the two nouns, yereq and ʿēśeb (according to the vocalization), motivated G to transpose them, attributing to the former the role of adjective. Although Hebrew nouns normally precede adjectives, this collocation was considered possible, in view of parallel phrases (constructs), such as yĕpē ʿênayim [Lit. “beautiful of eyes”], yĕpē tōʾar [Lit. “beautiful of form”]. This rather unusual expression provoked Qimhi to state: “the grass is edible only when it is green.” On v. 19 Ibn Ezra says, “the green grass is for animals.” Aquila translates as “vegetation of green grass.” Theodotion restores the order of M without changing G. To Symmachus the phrase is a genitive, as it is to the Targumim, which consider the word yereq to refer to vegetables, according to its meaning in, e.g., 1 Kgs 21:2.
Yet while there is some dispute as to the precise meaning of yereq ʿēśeb, there is nothing to indicate that the phrase intends to include every kind of vegetation in it as your comment asserts. The text appears to say rather what Ibn Ezra states in his comments on Gen 1:29, namely, that while the plants (ʿēśeb) were given to mankind as well as animals, the fruits of the trees (ʿēṣ) were reserved for mankind alone. Therefore I do not see the mention of plants (ʿēśeb) in v. 30 as an all inclusive term for all vegetation as you do. In fact, I see quite the opposite.
Moving on, you mention v. 26 as “contrasting humans from the other creatures” and state that an enumeration of “3 categories” invalidates the enumeration of the works of creation in my summary chart. In point of fact, v. 26 specifies the types of creatures over which mankind is to rule and lists, not “3 categories” as you maintain, but four: 1) fish 2) flying creatures 3) docile creatures and 4) scurrying creatures. And knowing that the context here is not about creating creatures, but the creatures over which mankind is destined to rule, you should understand why the author omits two types of creatures from the list of creatures, namely, 1) the great serpents and 2) the wild animals. The four types of creatures in v. 26 are creatures subservient to humans while the two that are omitted are not. You may compare this to Gen 9:2 where the fear of humans is brought up with a list of the exact same four subservient creatures as v. 26.
Moving on, you assert the existence of a “widely accepted chiastic structure” which I have several times now demonstrated has problems in its formulation and its bases which you have yet to address. You assert my approach is “unnecessary” even though I have shown problems with a symmetrical arrangement of the works and have drawn attention to the fact that scholars also recognize these problems which, again, you have yet to meaningfully countered. And you incredibly assert my approach is “foreign” while you make references to the Enuma Elish to understanding Genesis and outright dismiss what Jubilees, a work produced in the same cultural environment and in the same language as Genesis itself, might have to say. Truly astounding I must say.
Moving on, you say you “doubt the author of Gen 1 was consciously referencing the Tent or ark.” Well since you know something about critical scholarship, you probably know that the Hexameron is assigned to P (Priesterschrift, Priestly Source). Here is what one scholar says,
In the priestly conception of the world, the tabernacle is undoubtedly important. Indeed, in many recent reconstructions, the account of the tabernacle’s construction in Exod 25–31, 35–40* marks the conclusion and climax of the original priestly document, the Grundschrift. The priestly document opens with the creation of the world (Gen 1), and the creation finds its fulfilment in the making of the tabernacle.
— Nathan MacDonald, The Making of the Tabernacle and the Construction of Priestly Hegemony (New York, N.Y.: Oxford, 2023), 102.
So you are of course free to doubt that the Dwelling was in the mind of the author when the Hexaemeron was composed, but the connection agrees quite well with critical scholarship and is far from outlandish. So when ancient authors millennia ago actually within the religious tradition make the same connection, I think it might be good not to dismiss them too hastily. I remember how anthropologists and others scoffed at the stories that people on Easter Island told them about how the Moai walked to their locations and then learned much later that people had walked the Moai by swaying the slightly tilted figures from right to left with ropes. Often it just takes the removal of an unwarranted assumption to see a simple truth.
peacefulpete, I appreciate your efforts. It indicates to me that there are places I need to offer more explanation or explain differently. Thank you again for sharing your viewpoints. I hope you understand that there is no personal animosity in the defense of a thesis. Hopefully we are all after the truth of the matter and greater understanding.
