“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
The Bible’s first verse reigns majestically supreme over all other writings just as God reigns majestically supreme over all creation. While we cannot compare mere written words with the realities those words represent, we can compare the Genesis narrative with other texts. No other writing, ancient or modern, so elegantly delivers truth, beauty, and order as the highly structured and multi-layered text of Gen 1-4, which contains the creation account and its immediate aftermaths.
Starting from the most profound overall declaration, then thematically developing that declaration, the Creation Text (the first four chapters of Genesis) displays profound density of meaning, with the most compact statements at the beginning. The first verse is the keynote; the ideas it contains expand into the first chapter in greater detail. Chapters 2 to 4 add yet more detail, each word and phrase laden with meaning and far-reaching foreshadowings. As dedicated Bible students know, the teachings of Genesis form the backbone of the entire Bible. Echoes of Genesis redound even to the conclusion of the New Testament.
Gen 1:1, the first half of the two-verse Prologue, has the densest meaning of any verse in the Bible, as it covers the most territory in the fewest words. To fully appreciate the riches of this magnificent verse, this study will explore it from several perspectives:
- Scope: Gen 1:1 includes the entire realm of heaven and earth. What’s left?
- Theology: it’s the most profound statement about God ever written or that can be written.
- Impact: our overfamiliarity with Genesis dulls our awareness to its monumental impact.
- Literary Structure: it simultaneously introduces the creation account, the book of Genesis, and the Bible as a whole.
- Uniqueness: no ancient writing can compare with the orderly, elegant structure of the creation record.
- Vision: it reaches all the way back to the inception of the universe to establish an historical and “scientific” account.
Let’s look at what each aspect brings to our understanding.
Scope
The most obvious feature of 1:1 is its universal scope. Encompassing heaven and earth, verse 1 includes the entire universe as the initial creation of God. We can read this verse three ways, not necessarily mutually exclusive, and each offers a very broad scope. The first reading that comes to mind is a picture of all the vast heavens, with Earth, our home, being singled out for particular attention. A second possibility is that the phrase “heaven and earth” is a figure of speech meaning “everything there is,” such as when you say you searched “high and low” to indicate “everywhere.” If this is an idiom for “the entire universe,” it describes the vast panorama of God’s creative enterprise.
A third possible reading would take us even further. The phrase “heaven and earth” could encompass even more than the physical universe! How could that be? What is there beyond the universe? The key word here is “physical,” for the word “heavens” can carry a meaning beyond the material universe; it can also express God’s creation of the spiritual realm. The word for “earth” in the first verse denotes not only our planet specifically, but also the material realm in general. Consider the passage in Eph 1, where “heaven” refers to spiritual matters concerning the Divine presence and “earth” refers to humanity. God’s purpose is to unite these two through Jesus his Son:
“For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:9-10).
This unity depends, in part, on our development of the spiritual values cited in Eph 4-5. These come from God, for from God flow all things, physical and spiritual, material and immaterial.
I don’t know for sure if the primary intent of “heaven” in verse 1 is to include the intangible realm of such virtues as love, grace, mercy, virtue, and compassion, but it does accommodate this idea, and succeeding studies will use this perspective. This concept of heaven, combined with the entirety of the physical universe, embodied in the word “earth,” would embrace the complete expanse of all creation.
Theology
What can we know about God using only Gen 1:1? The verse has no description or information about God, but it does tell what God did. From that we can at least attribute “Creator” status to God. However, this sentence employs with maximum effect the technique of implication. In this way, it can tell us much about God without a direct word. By stating that in the beginning (that is, when the universe began, and here we define universe as the sum of all time, matter, energy, and space) God created, it implies that God exists/existed outside the realm of that universe. It does this incidentally and almost offhandedly. God was already present at the moment of the beginning.
Given that the beginning included the entire universe that came into existence at God’s volition, what does this tell us about God? The Prologue gives no explanation of God other than by implication: God existed already at the beginning and is the cause of the entire universe. No amount of words describing God could propound this fact more eloquently than to propose God as already existent at, and the cause of, the beginning.
What could one say about the essential nature of Deity that “in the beginning God” doesn’t already imply? This is a statement of infinite sublimity, condensation of thought, and moral and metaphysical power. In the fewest possible words, and therefore with the densest of meaning, the Bible introduces one eternal and omnipotent creator God. It does this without any direct description, by placing God outside the realm of our existence. Outside, in the sense of beyond, before, above, and around; encompassing and bringing into being the universe as we can barely comprehend it. Before the creative process starts, even before the statement describing the situation in which God began creation, God already existed. No more can be said on the matter.
Untold millions of words have issued forth from the mouths and pens of theologians and philosophers, but none of them will ever say nearly as much as does the Bible in one sentence that simply presupposes God has the attributes of creativity ex nihilo, omnipotence, and eternity. As we in the twenty-first century sense our minuscule presence in an ever-expanding knowledge of our universe, we should have all the more awe and respect for the Deity who brought it all into being by his will alone.
Impact
The brief statement of the creation of the universe, featuring a creator God who stands outside the constraints of that universe, makes an impressive and comprehensive opening. Imagine a first-time reader picking up a book, looking at the first page, and reading no less than a declaration of the creation of the universe! What kind of book is this going to be? Gen 1:1 is almost proverbial in its familiarity, so you may not appreciate its impact when you read it. Do not let familiarity dull your sense of the magnificent. It is not only a colossal declaration; it is also the very first sentence, with a massive impression upon the aware reader.
Yet no other statement or sentence could come first, at least not in a book that (to use human terms) audaciously and ambitiously sets out to teach us everything we need to know about God and life! Gen 1:1 has no peer for an opening sentence. Only overfamiliarity dulls our sense to its power and impact.
Literary Structure
As a first verse, Gen 1:1 not only grabs our attention, but also introduces the text that follows. This verse fulfills four literary functions:
- It sets the schematic stage for the shift of focus in verse 2.
- It introduces the creation account of Genesis 1 and 2. It gives the broad picture of the creation of the universe after which the first two chapters specify the details.
- It introduces the entire book of Genesis, which ends with the embryonic nation of Israel. The God of creation works out his purpose through Israel.
- Ultimately, Gen 1:1 introduces the entire Bible. It is a synopsis of the entire plan and purpose of God (to unite things in heaven and earth, Eph 1:10), including events as far distant in time as those depicted at the end of the Revelation. The last chapters of Scripture are still within the context (and explicit language) of the heaven and earth declaration of the Bible’s first verse.
The Prologue (verses 1 and 2) extends its overview from 1:1, first densely and strongly through chapter one, then it tapers to a guiding line through Genesis and all of Scripture. This feature alone displays the unsurpassed magnificence of verse one. It is the Prologue of the Creation Week and the Prologue of Genesis and the Prologue of Scripture. Regardless of where we are in the Bible, we are always in the shadow of the Prologue and the purview of the one creator God.
Uniqueness
Despite this profound declaration, many critics have placed the Bible on the same order as other Near-Eastern Creation epics. Nothing in mythology comes even close to the precision, theological sophistication, literary sublimity, and exquisite structure of early Genesis. Those who study such matters know that no other ancient writing approaches the expression of thought evinced in Gen 1:1.
Read this assessment from one scholar who concedes that the Bible’s creation account far exceeds primitive mythologies:
These foreign (Phoenician, Egyptian, Babylonian) creation myths recount not only the origins of the visible world, but, at the same time, of the Gods. Genesis 1, however, distinguishes itself radically from these all since there is no such theogony. This observation indicates the grandeur of Israel’s religion.
The surrounding nations believe in gods who came into being at a most ancient time. Israel’s God, however, lives from eternity to eternity. Furthermore, all these creation accounts are mythological in nature . . . . There is no greater contrast, then, than between the colorful, fantastic mythology of these peoples and the intellectually clear, prosaic supernaturalism of Gen 1.1
“Intellectually clear, prosaic super naturalism” refers to the structured text and understated activity of God. We will focus as often on the structure as on the message, because Genesis is uniquely structured.
Vision
Some defenses of early Genesis assert that the text is not intended to be a scientific account of how the world came to be. They dismiss the simplistic picture of God making stars and giraffes and say the narrative is figurative or symbolic.
To appreciate the issue of “vision,” set aside your familiarity with the text and assume the role of a first-time reader. Also set aside concepts of the division of knowledge that treat “scientific” and “religious” as separate realms of inquiry requiring different modes of investigation. The question of origins leads us to the nexus of science, philosophy, and theology. The first verse of the Bible clearly implies that moral and theological matters depend ultimately upon the question of origins. As the French scholar Henri Blocher observed:
In the last analysis one cannot make an absolute separation between physics and metaphysics, and religion has to do with everything, precisely because all realms are created by God and continue to depend on him. To oppose ‘doctrine’ and (factual) ‘history’ is to forget that biblical doctrine is first of all history. Faith rests on facts, objectively asserted.2
The Bible doesn’t recognize the assumptions most modern readers bring to it. The resurrection of Jesus is the most pertinent example of the principle expressed in the quotation above. The resurrection is a matter of faith and theology only because it is first a matter of history and biology. Likewise, the idea of a creator God is a religious matter only because it was first a matter of physics.
A fair reading of Genesis requires this expansive vision. The fullness of God’s message involves matters that we, in this age, consider matters of “science,” those that deal with the material, observable world. We may not know the details, but we do know that the Bible considers the origin of the universe a theological issue. By including a precisely formed creation account, the expansive vision of biblical narrative intends to relate the physical world and its Creator to issues of faith. That is why we want to ask not only questions about the creation account, but why it’s even in the Bible.
A Concluding Thought
Gen 1:1 stands without equal to any words ever written. I can say this confidently, having read only a small fraction of the great writings of the world, because it cannot, in principle, be exceeded. This verse, encompassing all heaven and earth in its grand sweep, takes us to a realm even beyond our reckoning of time and space.
Genesis 1:1 goes to the absolute limit of anything the human mind can conjure, and places God beyond that — all in a mere handful of words. No other thought could possibly start the Bible. It is the sentence of sentences in the Book of Books.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One