Creative Creation

The most haunting question about human life is answered in the first pages of the  Bible: How and why did it all  begin?   The answer came in the form of a hybrid poem, a product of combined Hebrew and Babylonian poetry.

In the 7th century BC, Babylonians captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and moved the mass of Judah's  people to the Ninevah area.  There, the Hebrews largely refused to accommodate to their newfound culture.  But without a central Temple to worship in, they settled on writing poetic and historic records of their past.l

Their memory of heroic exploits was easy to record.  But when it came to imagining human or cosmic origins, their poets struggled mightily.  It must have come with desperation that they turned to the insights of their captors whose creation account credited God with an eight-day week.

The Hebrew poets insisted  on retaining their sacred six-day tradition, so they squeezed the extra two days into their account, retaining the sequence of the action.  And other oddities broke in, such as Light flooding the earth  before the Sun and Moon were created.

Here was "revealed" the Purpose beyond the tangible world.  Now there came that major shift in loyalty: from Temple to Sacred Scroll.  The Scroll was portable, so it could be copied and carried home as the new center for family worship.

The hunger for the central Temple did not vanish, however.  So a new Temple was built in Jerusalem when the Hebrews returned to their homeland.  But by this time the Sacred Scrolls and family service were so ingrained that they became the focal points of their religious observance.

This hybrid poem, then, has stood the analyses, the tests of over twenty-five centuries. It attempts to unravel millions of years back to a self-evident Creator. Speculation about that Creator will go on forever.  But that Mystery is at the heart of our faith. It is a poem, after all, and its purpose is to challenge and lift our spirits, not to propose a scientific answer to a theological idea.