In this series of posts we’re addressing the question as to whether there is a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 (or 1:2 and 1:3). You can read more about the implications of this in the first post of this series. In this post I’m looking at the plausibility of a gap in the text by looking closely at the Hebrew grammar.
Way back in the first post of this series (December 2009!) I suggested that the frame question for this series will be:
Toward an answer to the question
Understanding the culture and environment in which the Bible was written can often prove to be helpful for understanding the biblical text. If we take just a very brief look at how temples were perceived in the Ancient Near East (the environment in which the Bible originated) and then go back and look at the biblical text, we gain some insight for understanding the significance of the relationship between temple and creation in Scripture.
In this post we’ll be taking a look at the creation account in Gen 1:1-2:3 (but also in the rest of chapter 2) in comparison to the views of the surrounding cultures. In the last post I tried to show that the form of the text plays an important role in conveying the author’s claims and in this post I want to show that the cultural background also plays an important role. Between this post and the next,
The last post of this series took a look at Gen 1 from the perspective of Hebrew narrative and we saw that the chapter has a grammatical structure giving strong indication that this is a narrative text. In this post, however, we’re going to look at the poietic shaping of this text and see how it contributes to the meaning the author intends to convey.
This next series of theological musings is going to use a question sent to me on Facebook as a springboard. A college friend and a former discipleship partner of mine asked:
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