A "Design" look at the Bible

My SS class has taken on a critical reading of the Bible in order to explore possible "Big Ideas" and read the Bible with those potential Big Ideas as context (with the idea that reading it without that context could be a very different experience).

As part of our exploration we have delved into Genesis. While researching, I found an interesting piece on how traditional Jewish scholars approached Genesis:

Traditional Jewish scholarship has viewed the creation account in Genesis as expressing spiritual concepts. The Mishnah in Tractate Chagigah states that the actual meaning of the creation account, mystical in nature and hinted at in the text of Genesis, was to be taught only to advanced students one-on-one. Tractate Sanhedrin states that Genesis describes all mankind as being descended from a single individual in order to teach certain lessons.

Among these are:

- Taking one life is tantamount to destroying the entire world, and saving one life is tantamount to saving the entire world.

- A person should not say to another that he comes from better stock because we all come from the same ancestor.

- To teach the greatness of God, for when human beings create a mold everything that comes out of that mold is identical, while mankind, which comes out of a single mold, is different in that every person is unique.

I also stumbled onto another interesting piece about interpreting Hebrew (I pasted his conclusion up-front):

It must be remembered that modern western thinkers view events in step logic. This is the idea that each event comes after the previous forming a series of events in a linear timeline. But, the Hebrews did not think in step logic but in block logic. This is the grouping together of similar ideas together and not in chronological order. Most people read Genesis chapter one from a step logic perspective or chronological, rather than from the block logic so prevalent in Hebrew poetry.
 
The Poetry of Genesis Chapter One, Jeff A. Benner
 
When we read Genesis chapter one we usually see only one story there, but there are actually many stories. Why don't we see these multiple stories? Because we read the Hebrew Bible from a Modern Western thinkers point of view and not from an Ancient Eastern thinkers such as the Hebrews who wrote it. The Hebrews style of writing is prolific with a style of poetry unfamiliar to most readers of the Bible. This poetry is nothing like the poetry we are used to reading today and therefore it is invisible to us.
 
The most common form of Hebrew poetry is called parallelism. Parallelism is when the writer says one thing in two or more different ways. The Psalms and Proverbs are filled with these such as the examples below.

Psalms 119:105 - "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." The first part of this verse is paralleled with the second part. This verse is not saying two different things, rather, one thing in two different ways.

Proverbs 3:1 - "My son, do not forget my teaching, and keep my commands in your heart." Again the first part is paralleled with the second part.

Genesis 4:23 - Lamech said to his wives, "Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me and a young man for injuring me."

Let's break down what Lamech says; [Adah and Zillah, listen to me] = [wives of Lamech, hear my words] then he says; I have killed [a man for wounding me] = [a young man for injuring me]. Lamech did not wound one and injure another, but killed one person and says it two different ways.

Often we overlook what the Bible is telling us because we are not recognizing what the poetry of a passage is attempting to convey. For example look at Psalms 40:8; "I desire to do your will, O my God; your Torah is within my heart" Here we see that doing the will of God is the same thing as having the Torah within your heart.

Now let us look at the Creation story Parallels of Genesis chapter one.

Creation Story Number 1

The first story is found in Genesis 1.1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The Hebrew word "bara" is a verb and is usually translated as "create". To really understand what this word means let us look at another passage where this word is used.

1 Samuel 2.29 - Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for my dwelling? Why do you honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by my people Israel?' The word "fattening" in the passage above is the Hebrew word "bara". The noun form of this verb is "beriya" and can be found in Genesis 41.4 - "And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows." The word "fat" is the Hebrew word "beriya".

The word "bara" does not mean, "create" (Hebrew actually has no word that means "create" in the sense of something out of nothing) but "to fatten". If we take the literal definition of "bara" in Genesis 1.1 we have - In the beginning God fattened the heavens and the earth. What does this fattening of the heavens and earth mean? This verse is not showing the creation of the heaven and earth, but rather the fattening or filling up of it. Therefore, Genesis 1.1 is a condensed version of the whole creation story.

Creation Story Number 2

The second creation story paralleling Genesis 1.1 is Genesis 1.2 - "and the earth was unfilled and empty and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Wind of God was hovering over the waters." In this passage we see that the earth was formless and empty before it was filled up, then the Wind of God hovers over the waters of the earth. This hovering would be the action of the Wind of god filling up the earth.

The use of the word "and" at the beginning of this verse may cause some confusion due to an understanding of how this word is used in Hebrew. In English the word "and" in between verses one and two means that what happens in verse two occurs after what happens in verse one. In Hebrew, the word "and" is used in standard Hebrew poetry to link two statements as one. In other words, verse one is the same thing as verse two.

Creation Story Number 3

The third story is found in Genesis 1.3-5. "And God said, 'Let there be light', and there was light and God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness and God called the light 'day', and the darkness he called 'night' and there was evening, and there was morning, the first day".

Hebrew, like English, has a word for one and a different word for first. The same is true for the words two and second, three and third, etc. As an example the Hebrew word for "three" is "shelosh", and the Hebrew word for "third" is "sheliyshiy". Days 2 - 7 use the Hebrew word for second, third, fourth, etc. We would assume that the "first" day would use the Hebrew word "reshon" meaning "first" in order to be consistent with the other six days, but instead we have the word "echad" meaning "one" or " in unity". The author is making a parallel with the "first" day and with all the days of creation. I believe this is because all seven days of the fattening of the earth are being united in this verse. The first day of creation is also a parallel with the whole of creation as the earth was in darkness and the act of filling the earth brought light to the earth.

Creation Story Number 4

The fourth creation story is found in Genesis 1.3-13. In these passages we have the first three days of creation. These are the days of separating. On the first day God separated light and darkness. On the second day God separated the waters above from the waters below forming the sky and the seas. On the third day God separated the land from the water forming dry land.

Creation Story Number 5

The fifth creation story is found in Genesis 1.14-31. In these passages we have the second set of three days of creation. On the fourth day God filled the light with the sun and the darkness with the moon and stars. On the fifth day God filled the sky with the birds and the sea with the fish. On the sixth day God filled the dry land with the animals and man. Notice the correlation between the first set of three days of separation with the second set of three days of filling.

Creation Story Number 6
The sixth story is the whole of Genesis chapter one. Though we have looked at five different stories of creation, they are all combined together to form one complete story of creation.
 
CONCLUSION
 
It must be remembered that modern western thinkers view events in step logic. This is the idea that each event comes after the previous forming a series of events in a linear timeline. But, the Hebrews did not think in step logic but in block logic. This is the grouping together of similar ideas together and not in chronological order. Most people read Genesis chapter one from a step logic perspective or chronological, rather than from the block logic so prevalent in Hebrew poetry.
 
 
I do think we may miss things when we read the Bible- how ancient Hebrews communicated, why they communicated, and who they were communicating with. We take things out of context possibly and discount the manner in which different peoples communicate. Can we understand God without any knowledge of ancient Hebrew- the language, the people, and how and why they communicated? Is it disingenuous to take the Bible literally- especially through an English translation?

The Cappadocian Fathers and "Negative" Theology

Recently I finished a book called Decoding Reality by Vlatko Vedral.  Vedral is a quantum physicist and the book has as its premise that the basic building block of "reality" is information- and especially information at the quantum level.  If you aren't up on your quantum mechanics, suffice it to say that scientists have for some time speculated that the smallest level of existence is something called a "quanta"- and at that level Newtonian Physics (what we are used to explaining our reality) doesn't work real well- much like it doesn't work at the massive macro level such as when light travels around large objects (the whole space-time thing and relativity).  At the quantum level things seem to do weird things like exist in two states at once, behave randomly, and take their cues from other "quanta".

In his book, Vedral notes that the early (4th Century) Christian "fathers" known as the Cappadocian Fathers- Basil the Great, who was bishop of Caesarea; Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa, who was bishop of Nyssa; and a close friend, Gregory of Nazianzus, who became Patriarch of Constantinople- used something very close to the scientific method to describe God and to think about Him (These "fathers" were famous for coming up with the explanation of the mystery and Orthodox definition of "the trinity" as well as being the force behind the Nicene Creed, among other things).

The Cappadocian Fathers reasoned that humans could not describe or explain God- as God was too complex and "high" an entity for humans to understand Him and how He worked.  By using human words to describe God, they felt, would thus limit God- because human language was by definition made by humans and thus limited to what humans have experienced.  Instead, they recommended that we describe God by what God is "not" (similar to the scientific method wherein someone comes up with a hypothesis and the hypothesis becomes stronger through others attempting to disprove the hypothesis through tests). 

So, for instance, one would not say God is "good", since that word has a certain limited connotation to humans and might not describe God very well at all.  A better way to describe God is that He is "not evil".  Another way the Cappadocian Fathers talked about God was to say that they believed in God, but that God did not exist.  Their reasoning was that to put the moniker of "existence" on God with the human understanding of that word was problematic- due to our lack of ability to understand how God exists, whether He really does exist like we know of existence, and whether that word even makes sense in God's "world" or reality.

(see this link for an interesting explanation of "Negative Theology": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_theology )

quotes:
"The Cappadocian Fathers of the 4th century said that they believed in God, but they did not believe that God exists in the same sense that everything else exists. That is to say, everything else that exists was created, but the Creator transcends even existence. The essence of God is completely unknowable; mankind can only know God through His energies."

and:
B"ahya ibn Paquda shows that our inability to describe God is similarly related to the fact of His absolute unity. God, as the entity which is "truly One" (האחד האמת), must be free of properties and is thus unlike anything else and indescribable; see Divine simplicity. This idea is developed fully in later Jewish philosophy, especially in the thought of the medieval rationalists such as Maimonides and Samuel ibn Tibbon.
It is understood that although we cannot describe God directly (מצד עצמו) it is possible to describe Him indirectly via His attributes (תארים). The “negative attributes” (תארים שוללים) relate to God Himself, and specify what He is not. The “attributes of action” (תארים מצד פעולותיו), on the other hand, do not describe God directly, rather His interaction with creation. Maimonides was perhaps the first Jewish Thinker to explicitly articulate this doctrine."

This quote from an article on the Cappadocian Fathers on theandros.com (http://www.theandros.com/cappavision.html), an on-line journal of Orthodox Christian Theology and Philosophy, states some more interesting ideas:

"...Further, the Cappadocians acknowledge two methods of understanding and experiencing God. The first is a method of knowledge by epinoia, an intellectual and rational approximation (a category of kataphatic knowledge). [3] It is used to describe God in a rational realm of the created world and formulates in language manifestations of God in His names and energies. The second is the method of knowledge by means of direct experience. It goes beyond sense perceptions (a category of apophaticism) towards union with God. This constitutes a paradox where God is seen as knowable (kataphasis) and unknowable (apophasis) at the same time.



Gregory of Nyssa agrees that a real knowledge of God is not to be found in the created world, but was careful not to make the cognitive knowledge, even if necessarily limited, seem unimportant. [4] He insists on the absolute transcendence and unknowability of the Trinity, while emphasizing the reasonable accuracy of words as verbal signifiers..."

My initial thoughts on all of this is that it echoes some of the ideas I've had in the past that we be wary of limiting God to what we think the Bible says or what we've grown up learning, or some kind of brilliant deduction we've arrived at in our enlightened years.  A thirst for knowledge first and humbleness a close second- realizing one is probably wrong even with new information- will probably serve us well as opposed to a haughty surety that we have arrived at some kind of final knowledge of God.

Other links on this subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloud_of_Unknowing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracles_(book)
http://religion.wikia.com/wiki/Negative_theology

The Vedral book concludes that we make our own reality.  That trees that fall in an empty forest really make no noise.  In other words, our interaction with information at the quanta level both reveals and becomes our reality.  He postulates that we are in a "Matrix-like" existence, but instead of Neo seeing a false reality constructed by computers, we see a "true" reality constructed by our own interaction with it ("it" being reality and our "seeing" limited to our 5 senses).  This dichotomy seems both counterintuitive and hard to understand.  And that is the same with attempting to understand God- much like the Cappadocian Fathers reckoned: that we have to have the two ways of understanding and experiencing God (apophatic and kataphatic) because of the paradox that He is both knowable and unknowable.