Creation and myth

Today I drove up to Claremont School of Theology for visit day.

The last time I went to visit a campus was the summer of 2000, and it was Catholic University of America.

Anyway, I'm at least two years from starting grad school... Actually, I'm at least 60 credits from a BA or a BS, and since I'm not planning on going back full time until next fall, I'm probably closer to three or three and a half years from starting grad school.

I guess that gives me plenty of time to study rudimentary Greek and/or Hebrew.

Anyway, it was a good day. I was nervous about going, but, like so many things that have made me nervous over the last few weeks, my anxiety was causeless. (Okay, I don't want to discount any of the things I've felt recently. I still don't feel ready to go to seminary, because I'm not ready to go to seminary. Being nervous about a visit day for prospective students does border on the ridiculous. Being outside my box, though, is legitimate cause for nerves.) Everyone at Claremont--the faculty, the staff, the students, and the prospective students who were on campus with me--was wonderful.

I think the highlight of my day--besides the awesome guy I met who was switching careers from architecture--was sitting through half a lecture on the Old Testament. Specifically, the lecture was on Genesis 1, and the theme of Creation. Obviously.

Dr. Sweeney's lecture was intense and fabulous. When I told Karen about the class, she exclaimed "He rocks on Genesis 1!" right away, and I agree. He talked not only about Genesis, but about creation themes throughout the Hebrew Bible, including Exodus, Job, Judges, and Isaiah, just to name a few. And that was just the beginning (pardon the pun). He also told us about other creation mythology, like that of Babylon and of the Ba'al tradition. It was supercool.

During the class, Dr. Sweeney made a point about the first verse of the Bible--you know, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." And it goes on, as we all know, to say that "earth was without form, and void, and the Spirit of God moved over the waters." So it always sounded to me as though God was there, you know, moving--but the formless void of earth, and the waters God was moving over, were there too. Because a void, and waters, are something. And it never says that God created the waters--just that He separated them. He didn't say "let there be water", He said "let there be light." That whole thing was always the source of a little tiny bit of dissonance for me, because it mostly seemed as though people--if they thought--thought that it was God, and nothing.

And that's just what Dr. Sweeney said! The Hebrew words of Gen 1:1 are (apparently, I mean, I don't read Hebrew yet...) more along the lines of "In the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void," etc. This falls more in line with the creation imagery in the rest of the Old Testament, especially the bits where God tames the "chaos monster" i.e., Leviathan. Meaning, basically, that the concept of "creation out of nothing" may need some revision, and that creation imagery is all about bringing order out of chaos, not nothing. And I thought, "Wow, I was thinking seminary-level thoughts when I was reading my Bible story book."

And I just now thought, that some of the scientists who are looking for the origins of the universe are trying to discover the set of curcumstances that overcame chaos in favor of order (a situation that doesn't happen in the physical world). And, in this understanding of Genesis 1:1, God is totally the circumstance that overcame chaos.

I LOVE it when science and religion fuse in my head like that.