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.
