The Lost World of Adam and Eve Read Online Free PDF Page B

are going to be bringing forward into the chapters that follow. First, in biblical terms, order is related to sacred space. It is God’s presence that brings order and establishes sacred space. Sacred space is the center of order as God is the source of order. Therefore, when we talk about the establishment of order, we are, in effect, talking about the establishment of sacred space. We will discuss this in more detail in chapter four.
    Second, we should keep in mind that all of this discussion is setting up the real focus of this book: the question of human origins. Just as we are finding that the account of cosmic origins is less material than we may have thought from our reading of Genesis 1, we are also going to find that the discussion of human origins has less interest in the material than we may have thought.

Proposition 3
    Genesis 1 Is an Account of Functional Origins, Not Material Origins
    In the last chapter, I offered evidence that the activity of creation in the ancient world, including the biblical text, was seen largely in terms of bringing order and giving functions and roles. It included naming and separating. This view is also found throughout the ancient Near East. In this chapter, I am going to go the next step to show how the seven-day account focuses on order and function rather than material production.
    We saw in the last chapter that the starting point in Genesis 1 was a time when there was no order or function. In the ancient world, that description meant that nothing existed (since existence only pertained to what had been ordered). We are now going to proceed to look at each of the seven days to see whether the emphasis is on material objects or an ordered environment.
    Day One
    The final result of the activities of day one is the naming of day and night. We note that God does not call the light “light”—he calls the light “day,” and the darkness he calls “night.” Thus, we can see that the focus is day and night rather than light and darkness. “Day” names a period of light, and “night” names a period of darkness (Gen 1:5). Those periods are “created” when they are separated from each other. This is not a discussion of physics, and the Israelite audience would not have seen anything here that was a material object. Right from the first day, then, the text does not recount anything material coming into existence. Instead, the alternating periods of light/day and darkness/night constitute the origins of time. Time orders our existence. It is a function, not a material object. On day one God creates day and night—time. As this origins account begins, the Israelite audience would not view it as focused on material.
    All of it is introduced by God saying “Let there be . . .” This portrays the power of God’s spoken word. His decree calls light into existence, but again we have to understand the statement of the text with a recognition of what the Israelite audience considered “existence” to mean.
    Day Two
    Day two begins with another act of separation: the waters above from the waters below. Everyone in the ancient world believed there were waters above (since it sometimes came down) and waters below (since you could dig to find water and since there were springs where the waters emerged). No new scientific information is being given here; the text reflects the ways in which everyone in the ancient world thought about the cosmos and has particular significance for what they believed about the weather. God accomplished this separation by means of the rāqîa ʿ (“vault, expanse, firmament”). Prior to the midsecond millennium A.D ., this term was consistently understood as a solid sky that held back the rain. When it became widely recognized that the sky was not solid, other translations began to be used that focused more on the lower levels of the atmosphere, using nontechnical terms such as expanse or vault.
    Everyone in the ancient world believed in a solid sky,