Prepared by:
RICHARD G. PAZCOGUIN
UST Institute of Religion
By: Cecil Frances Alexander
All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful
The Lord God made them all.
The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,
He made them every one.
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.
The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water,
To gather every day.
The purple headed mountains,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning
That brightens up the sky.
He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well
GOD SPEAKS TO US THROUGH HIS
CREATION.
Creation is the FIRST ACT OF GOD’S
REVELATION.
•Creation proves the existence of God.
•Creation, being beautiful and good, tells us
that the Person behind it is the source of all
beauty and goodness.
There are two creation accounts in the
Bible:
•THE PRIESTLY ACCOUNT – Gen. 1:1-2:4a
•THE YAHWIST ACCOUNT – Gen. 2:4b-24
Take note that these accounts are neither historical nor scientific. These stories are
mythical: they are not real events but they tell us of the TRUTH.
AUTHORS: Jewish Priests (Priestly Tradition)
DATE OF COMPOSITION: Between 587-537 B.C.
CONTEXT: Babylonian Captivity
CONTENT: Being written in exile, this account of creation presents
an affirmation that God is good, and that he wants his people to be
free. For the mean time, His chosen people must remain faithful to
the commandments, in observing the Sabbath, and they must not do
as the prosperous Babylonians who worship the heavenly bodies.
This creation account highlights the power of God and the beauty of
creation. The story, however, is not free from Babylonian influences.
In Babylonian mythologies, gods create through separation of
elements. In the priestly account, we find God separating elements
before populating the earth.
The text was written by PRIESTS and NOT BY
SCIENTISTS. This creation account is a
LITURGICAL TEXT and not a scientific one.
The priests compared creation to a Liturgical
Procession (Something like what we see
during high masses), wherein the arrangement
of the participating ministers in
HIERARCHICAL i.e. from the least important to
the most important:
-Man is created last to indicate the superiority
of man over all creatures.
-The last day is the Sabbath day- emphasizing
the of the eminence of seventh day.
THE PRIESTLY ACCOUNT TELLS US THAT GOD IS A GOD OF ORDER
AND BEAUTY.
In the beginning- Chaos
Day 1- Day and Night
Day 4- Sun, Moon, Stars
Day 2 – Sky and Seas
Day 5- Birds and Fish
Day 6 – Animals, Humans
Day 3 – Waters and
Dry Land
Day 7 - Rest
The priests wrote that God rested on the seventh
day to remind the Jews of THE SABBATH REST- a
tradition which the Jews may tend to forget during
their exile in Babylon .
Just as God rested after working, so must the
worker rest on the seventh day to enjoy the fruits
of his labor and to glorify his Creator.
Israelites would say that the “seventh day” is the
day of their freedom from slavery - from their
toilsome work in Egypt. To rest in to share in the
“rest” of God- eternity. To rest on the Sabbath is to
have a foretaste of what God has in store for us in
eternity.
“LET THERE BE…”
God creates by the mere act of his will
unlike the Babylonian gods who cannot
create out of nothing.
“GOD MADE THE TWO GREAT LIGHTS”
The account does not speak of the sun and the
moon but of two great lights. The two great lights
represent the lamps in the temple of Jerusalem
signifying the presence of God. The priests were
reminding the people that they should not worship
the sun and the moon as the Babylonians did for
these heavenly bodies are merely signs of God’s
presence, and that even if the temple of Jerusalem
had been destroyed by the Babylonians, the whole
universe is God’s temple.
God is a Spirit. We cannot resemble him physically. We
resemble him in terms of his attributes – God is good-we are
good, God is intelligent- we are intelligent, God is beautifulwe are beautiful…etc. It doesn’t mean, however that our
bodies do not resemble God. Our entire being participates in
the image and likeness of God. This means that even our
bodies reflect the goodness and beauty of the Creator.
In what are we the image and likeness of God?
•Just as God is Lord of Creation, Man was created creator
and made master of creation.
•Just as God is love, Man is a loving relationship – love
cannot exist without “the other” hence the bible says: “male
and female he created them”.
(Note the in this account, male and female were made through the
same creative act. This was to emphasize that while Jews treat
women as inferior, women are also made in the image and
likeness of God.)
The priests wanted to remind the people in exile that just as God liberated their
ancestors from Egypt, so will this same God liberate them from the Babylonians.
Through the creation account, the priests retold the EXODUS STORY.
Gen 1:1-2 “In the
beginning…The earth was a
FORMLESS wasteland and
DARKNESS covered the
waters…”
Gen 1:3- “And God said : ‘Let
there be light…’” - this light is not
the sun for the sun is yet to be
created. This is the light of God
Himself- the light which guided the
chosen people in their journey from
slavery to freedom.
In Egypt, the Hebrews were
formless as they had no sense of
unity, no leaders, no freedom. They
were in darkness for they were
strangers to the GREAT LIGHT.
Gen 1:9 “Let the water under
the sky be gathered in a
single basin so that the dry
land may appear.”
“God said…”
Is repeated ten times:
The waters were parted and dry
land appeared…
To form his people, God must
first set them free and then…
give them laws.
For the Jews, CREATION and LIBERATION are synonymous. When God liberated the
Israelites, He created His People.
AUTHOR: Jewish “Catechists”
DATE OF COMPOSITION: Around 950 B.C.
CONTEXT: Reign of King Solomon
CONTENT: This creation account is focused
on man. Again, this is not a scientific or eyewitness account but an attempt to answer
questions regarding man’s nature, origin,
and purpose of existence.
In this account, life on earth began when
water gushed forth from the ground.
Being the earliest written scripture, this
recalls what paradise meant for the
Israelites who wandered in the desert for
forty years…the oasis.
Gen 2:7 “The Lord God formed man out of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and
man became a living being.”
People at that time concluded that since man returns to dust at
death, man must also be made of dust. But the author added a
special element to indicate the holiness of man- God’s breath.
Man is not like any other creature- he is hallowed by God’s
breath, and since God is eternal, man lives for as long as God is
in his soul – sanctifying grace.
YAHWEH POTTER
In this story, God created man out of
clay. To create is to make something
out of nothing. This was a bit difficult
to understand so the authors used the
image of the POTTER – a person who
turns something worthless (clay) into
something beautiful.
THE LONELY MAN
The man was placed in the Garden of Eden
symbolizing all the things humans long for. Yet
the bible attests to the fact that the solitary man
cannot be happy – he cannot reach his goals,
he cannot fulfill God’s plan: IT IS NOT GOOD
FOR MAN TO BE ALONE. He needs to relate
with others.
NO SUITABLE PARTNER
The story goes on with the creation of the
animals to be man’s companions. God gave
man the power of naming the animals. In the
Biblical context, to name something is to have
dominion over it. Man was given authority
over other creatures. At the same time, God
expects man to be the steward of creation.
At first, the man was happy. After a while, he
was sad again. Was God stupid not to know
that what man needed was a woman? The
author was simply pointing out that animals
do not make a suitable partner for man and
that man can only find fulfillment once he
enters into a loving relationship with a
woman.
BONE OF MY BONES AND
FLESH OF MY FLESH
The author, realizing that one of the greatest pains of
man is the lack of company conveys this message:
Without others, man and human life is not “good”.
The man was made to sleep because creation is God’s
“secret”. Only God knows how to create.
The woman was taken from man’s rib to show that in
marriage, man and woman become one.
Gordon Higham wrote: “Woman was not taken from
man’s head to be ruled by him, nor from his feet to be
trampled by him. But under his arm to be protected by
him, from near his heart to be loved by him, and from
near his side to walk beside him.”
IT’S GETTING HOT IN HERE…
The bible says that the man and his wife were naked but
were not ashamed.
Looking around we see children who are not ashamed to
walk around naked, but as they grow into adulthood, they
begin to be conscious about the necessity of covering
themselves.
The author is telling a concrete reality: all adults are
sinners and are responsible for the evils in society. No one
is exempted from this guilt.
ADAM AND EVE
We know now that the story is mythical. Was there really an “Adam and
Eve”? One thing is for sure- there was a first moment for humanity. The
first human beings, no matter who they were, how many they were, or in
which part of the world they were – the first humans were Adam and Eve.
How humanity began existing is for science to answer. One thing is
certain- man originated from God.
TREE OF LIFE
TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF
GOOD AND EVIL
Gen 2:17 “From that tree you shall not eat, for the moment you eat from eat,
you are surely doomed to die”. It is not knowledge of good and evil that is
fatal to man, but his desire to make himself God (see Gen 3:5).
To become what one is not is to die.
The tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evils presents to us the
a dilemma at the same time a power: the power to choose between life and
death.
•God is the source of everything.
•The whole of creation is good. Creation
reflects the beauty of God.
•Man is the highest creature – he is the only
one created in the image and likeness of
God.
•Creation is at the service of man. Man is
the steward of creation.
•Man is not a solitary being. He only finds
happiness by relating with others.
•Man and woman are equal. They become
one in the community of marriage.
Etienne Charpentier
HOW TO READ THE OLD TESTAMENT
Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1981
Luc Colla, CICM
THE LOVE STORY OF GOD AND HIS PEOPLE
Bagui: St. Louis University, 1984
Ariel Alvarez Valdes
THE BIBLE: Questions People Ask (Part 1)
Quezon City: Claretrian Publications, 2002