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It's exactly true, which is why you have to come up with a made up, unBiblical exception to explain why this example doesn't refute your supposition.
Unbiblical? Maybe that which you don't understand you shouldn't be so quick to condemn. Just b/c you don't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I have learned that many times. Sometimes I have to put something on a shelf (in my mind) b/c I don't understand it. Time and time again, a light bulb moment happens and I then understand the item I placed on the shelf. Just something to think about.
Let's take a look at Scripture and see how "unbiblical" it is:
There is a real connection between Creation in Genesis 1 and Genesis 7-8. The English you probably don't see it, but in the Hebrew it is very clear.
Genesis 1:2a - in the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void.
Formless and void in Hebrew is Tohu Vavohu. The Hebrew suggests the words mean it was astonishingly void, very chaotic, no order.
Genesis 1:2b - darkness was upon the face of the deep - V'choshech al pnei tehom and the spirit of G-d was hovering over the face of the waters - V'ruach Elokim merachephet al pnei hamayim
Water is everywhere, the (Spirit) Ruach is hovering over these waters. Ruach can be translated as either spirit or wind depending on the context of the verse. The spirit is hovering over these chaotic, astonishingly void waters. There is darkness as well.
So put the three items together what do you get? Water, water everywhere, it's really dark, and it's chaotic, so chaotic waters looks like storm-tossed waves all over the place. It looks like a really big storm, like a flood.
What happened in chapter 7-8. A big storm, water everywhere.
Okay there is water everywhere in Genesis 1 and 8, but that it not evidence of a re-creation. I agree, so let's continue.
Now, as Noah and the animals were on the ark what happens in the 1st verse of chapter 8? - and God caused a wind to pass over the earth - Vaya'aver Elokim
ruach al ha'aretz.
I bolded the word ruach for you. A wind passed over the earth. Remember I said earlier that ruach can mean spirit and it can mean wind. There's a wind/spirit of God that passes over the earth!
In 1:2, which is reminding us so much of the flood, a verse which describes a water world that's chaotic, that's dark, that's all flood-like, the first semblance of order that you get in our creation world is this spirit of G-d that's just hovering and blowing over the waters. So too here in Chapter 8 there is this wind of G-d, another Ruach Elokim, that's blowing over the waters. It's suggestive. Maybe it's for real. This is the fourth element - we talked about three elements; darkness, water everywhere, chaos, that seems to link these two, here's a fourth element; the wind of God.
Is this for real? Can this continue?
To recap, we have a world that is chaotic, dark, filled with water. Then in both stories we have the Ruach of God hovering over the waters. Let's go into day 2. This is kind of fun even though I already knew this. It is always good to back and relook at events.
Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." Genesis 1:6
So it's as if there's waters below the sky and waters above the sky. What is water's above the sky? Oh, the word for expanse is rakivah which means sky. A little harder to figure out but we have two sets of waters. An interesting thought is heaven in Hebrew is sha
mayim. Water in Hebrew is mayim, which I bolded in shamayim. There is this thought of water in heaven. So we have two sets of waters.
Genesis 8:2 - Also the sources of the deep and the windows of the skies were closed up, and the rain from the sky was held back.
Here is days 2 in the flood story. There is a separation of the waters just like day 2 in creation.
In creations on the 3rd day we have the division between land and water. As God is causing the flood to recede, so G-d causes the fountains of the deep to be stopped up - which is to say the well water - and the windows of the heaven - which is just a poetic way of saying clouds. God stopped up the windows of the heaven and the rain from the heaven was restrained. But if you think about that, what was God doing? God was taking the upper water and putting it back in water vapor, into the clouds, and the lower water and putting it down a well water, and now what would there be in between clouds after a storm and well water going back down? You'd sort of see sky one more time. It's kind of this sort of image. Your upper waters; clouds, water vapor, your lower waters; ocean, and over here sky in between. It's almost like now we have a vision of what this meant with the upper waters and the lower waters and the sky in between. That same image is now being re-created over here in Genesis Chapter 8, fascinating, in the world after the flood.
Genesis 1:9-10 - Then God said, "Let the water below the sky be gathered to one place. Let the dry ground appear." And it happened so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the collection of the water He called "seas." And God saw that it was good.
What happened next in the flood story? In verses 11-14 we have the appearance of vegetative life, the appearance of trees and land!
Three days in and I hope you are seeing the pattern.
I will come back to day 4.
Okay day 5. What happens on day 5? Living creatures are created. What happens next in the flood event? The dove goes out and doesn't return in verse 12. Now there are birds in the world...day 5.
What happens on day 6? Creation of man in the world. Look at what happens next in the flood event...v16 - "Come out of the ark, you and your wife, your sons and your sons' wives with you. We have humans on the earth.
Recap: remember we had the dark, chaotic water world, well after the flood we've also got this dark, chaotic water world with the floodwaters raging. In the creation story we had this spirit of God, the Ruach Elokim, the wind of God hovering over the waters; in the post-flood world we've also got - God makes this wind blow; Vaya'aver Elokim ruach al ha'aretz - there's this wind blowing over the waters in the post-flood world. We've got the sky dividing between the upper waters and lower waters, a strange kind of thing, it's almost like it's explained for us in the corresponding event that happens in the post-flood world, when one more time you have sky dividing between water vapor up above and lower water - inundated water world, the oceans down below.
Then you have the recession of the waters, the waters gathering into one place, dry land appearing in the creation story. Same thing happening in the post-flood story. Then you've got trees and vegetation appear on the earth in the Noah story, you have the dove bringing back the olive branch signifying to Noah that trees and vegetation are back on the earth. You have lights placed in heaven - we don't seem to have anything like that in the post-flood world. But the next event which is the appearance of bird life on the world, you have the dove of Noah entering the world and actually staying there after the dove brought back the olive branch. Finally, in Day 6, animals and human life appearing on the earth, and lo and behold, animals and humans leave the ark.
Six days out of 7? Not bad. I would like to have that batting average.
This leaves us with a question. If it is for real that the creation story is mirroring itself in the post-flood story, that we have clear intertextual connections between them, what does this mean?
During the flood what happened? What do floods do? They destroy. A flood of the proportion in the Bible would mean the world was destroyed. Perhaps what the Torah is telling us is that we should look at the story of the post-flood rebuilding as a re-creation event. Why? Why is God recreating the world? Most of us would say, the people were bad and God destroyed the people, not the world. Is that correct? Is that what God was intending to destroy? Maybe the world was bad as well?
Let's look. Chapter 6:11-12 - Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.
Look how many times the word earth appears in the story. Earth, earth, earth - the end of all flesh has come before Me for the earth is filled with violence. I will destroy them through the earth. One, two, three, four, five - five times over here in three verses everything that's mentioned has to do with the earth. The earth was filled with violence, the earth was corrupt, G-d looked and saw that the earth was terrible and the end of all flesh has come before Me. Why? Because the earth is filled with violence. It seems based on these verses at least the earth was primary and the people were secondary. The people ruined the earth, therefore the earth had to be rebuilt.
There is a lot more to those verses, but that is for another time....
It's the recipient - it's almost if you would think about in a physical sense, to give you an analogy, the idea of pollution, people can physically pollute the earth. It somehow, in some sort of I guess spiritual way, there was this sort of trickle-down corruption that eventually ruined the earth and made G-d decide you know, it's time to renovate. I had to rebuild the earth, get rid of the old one, destroy it - which has interesting ramifications for the meaning of the flood.
So if God needed to renovate the world, He would needed some place to keep the people until the renovation is complete. Hence the ark.
Let's go back a second to day 4. In creation, all the days events had to do with the earth, but day 4. Yes, the stars, moon, and sun relate to the earth, but not directly. If the earth is what needed to be recreated, there would be no need to recreate the stars, moon, and the sun. Just a thought as to why they are not in the post-flood recreation story.
Well that is all I got time for today. Come back next time for the rest of the story...
This development came from Rabbi David Foreman - just giving him credit.
Shabbat Shalom
