Why is Genesis 1 in the Bible?
God created the universe. Does Genesis 1 say more?
Introduction to Genesis 1
The poetry of Genesis 1 is one of the most well-known and best loved passages of Scripture. It’s orderly and organized, and after each day God pronounced “it was good.”
There are Christians who have held up Genesis 1 as literal history. Some have demanded that we believe the historicity of Genesis 1, even suggesting that if we don’t accept Genesis 1 as historically accurate, then we can’t possibly believe anything in the Bible. Some have tried to identify the date of creation (around 6000 years ago), and have staunchly defended the “day” in the text as an actual 24-hour day. And to do this, many in the church have had to forget, discount, or ridicule the science of evolution.
My perspective is a little different than those folks.
I think Genesis 1 is extremely important to the theology of the Old Testament, but that importance is not about the age of the earth or whether the “days” were 24 hours.
There are several stories in Genesis and Exodus that are borrowed from other cultures (myth-borrowing was a common practice in the ancient world). But when the Hebrew Scriptures borrowed a story, it never copied and pasted the story exactly as it was. The Bible authors always put their own tweak to the original story, to tell us something about who God is, or something about our identity as people of God, or something about the human condition.
However, Genesis 1 is not a story borrowed from another culture. It is a point-by-point refuting of the Babylonian creation story.
Babylon, 587 BCE
The Babylonians had been trying to extract taxes from the people of Judah for many years. The leaders of Judah had been resisting paying the tribute, and so finally, in 587 BCE, the Babylonians had enough. They brought their army and flattened the land of Judah. They destroyed the city walls of Jerusalem, wrecked the temple, and melted down all the gold in the temple and took it back to Babylon.
But gold is not the only thing they took back to Babylon. The Babylonians took a large number of people back with them as well—leaders, priests, soldiers, merchants—anyone they thought might lead a revolt.
The people of Judah were forced to live in Babylon. They weren’t slaves—they could get jobs and raise families. They just couldn’t leave. And the people of Judah were heartbroken, because they were far away from their land. In the ancient world, most people believed that gods were gods of geographical areas. So, if the people of Judah were in Babylon, they were not only far away from their land, but far away from God, too. They believed God was still sitting by himself back in the ruins of the temple.
This time was known as the Babylonian Exile.
As the months dragged into years in Babylon, the leaders of Judah began to see something. Their children were in Babylonian schools learning Babylonian religion. The merchants were interacting with Babylonians in the streets, and being exposed to Babylonian culture. The leaders of Judah began to fear—rightly so—that the people of Judah would slowly lose their identity and become assimilated into Babylonian culture.
So, the leaders of Judah instituted a variety of strategies that would help them maintain their identity:
The synagogue was instituted, where people could go to learn the Hebrew scriptures and connect with each other.
Rituals and traditions were codified. Many traditions had already been in place for generations, but now they were set in place and made critical for the life of the people.
And perhaps most importantly, they wrote down the oral stories and assembled the written stories into what we know as the Old Testament (a few of the Old Testament books were written after the Exile, but most of the books were assembled or written down during this time).
These strategies became essential for the people, to maintain their identity and vibrancy.
And Genesis 1 is one of those stories written to help people maintain their identity, and to make a distinction between the God of the Bible and the Babylonian gods.
The Babylonian Creation Story
So, I mentioned before that Genesis 1 is a point-by-point refutation of the Babylonian Creation story.
What was the Babylonian creation story?
The god Apsu and the goddess Tiamat had a lot of little god children. The children, as children do, made a lot of noise. So much noise, in fact, that Apsu couldn’t get any rest. So, he decided to kill all of them.
One of the children, Ea (the wise Earth god), found out about his father’s evil plan. Ea killed his Apsu, his father.
The widowed Tiamat, filled with anger, gave birth to horrible monsters. These monsters had poison instead of blood, and would take revenge on Ea for killing his father. The chief of the monsters was Kingu, and he would lead all the monsters to kill Ea and anyone god who sided with him.
Ea then created Marduk, a powerful warrior, who killed Kingu and all the evil monsters. Then, Marduk and Ea killed Tiamat. Marduk cut Tiamat’s body in two, and then took half her body and made the sky, and the other half of her body became the earth. Then the remaining gods created humans to clean up the blood and carnage of the war.
So, in the Babylonian creation mythology:
The gods are capricious and have little regard for ethical behavior.
The gods are evil and destructive.
The process leading to the creation of the world was chaotic and a constant state of war.
People were created as a janitorial afterthought, with no purpose but to clean up the mess that the gods had made.
Genesis 1
Now look at Genesis 1. God is orderly and creative. No battles, no killing, no chaos. Just a step-by-step creation—bringing things into being by the power of His word.
After each step in the process, God called everything “good.”
Humans, in Genesis 1, were the crowning achievement of creation. They’re task was to be stewards of creation—to take care of the earth and each other.
So, the point of Genesis 1 is to be a rejection of the Babylonian creation story. The theology of Genesis 1 is important to the entire Bible: Chapter 1 says:
We reject the idea that God is capricious, chaotic, and warlike. We believe that God is creative and orderly, and carries out his plan.
We reject that the process leading up to creation was killing and anarchy. We believe God is thoughtful and gives loving care to his creation.
We reject that humans were created as an afterthought. We believe that God made humans to be in the image of God, made to care for each other and care for the creation God had made.
Here’s the Point
In the late 1800s, there was a movement to make all the narrative in the Bible into literal history—as if someone was walking around with a video camera and then writing it down without error. That’s called the doctrine of inerrancy—that everything in the Bible is literal, historical, actual fact. This is different than the doctrine of inspiration—that the Bible is God’s word, and everything in the Bible is there for a reason—to help us understand Jesus better. Some people confuse the doctrine of inerrancy with the doctrine of inspiration. That’s why so many people, books, and websites extol the historicity of Adam and Eve, insist that the world was created in six 24-hour days, and oppose the science of evolution.
But the point of Genesis 1 is not to tell us what year the creation occurred. The point of Genesis 1 is to tell us who God is: a creative, orderly God who loves his creation and made us to be the pinnacle of creation. It’s about how God created us to be in a relationship with Him. This relationship that God created with us is further explained in Genesis 2-3 and then continued throughout the rest of Scripture. Genesis 1 tells us that God loves each one of us, and has since the beginning of time.
If you liked this article, you might enjoy the book Read the Bible in a Year. It is a chronological guide to reading the Bible, with 52 introductions for each week’s readings. The introductions include the history and of the book you’re reading, important passages, and faith insights.
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More Bible and Church Resources
Read the Bible in a Year: 52 Introductions for a Chronological Journey through the Bible
Help! I Want to Read the Bible: A Beginner’s Quick Start Guide
Understanding Genesis: The Beginning of the Promise. A Bible Study
Youth Ministry: Ten Non-Group Models
Conversations at the Pearly Gates: Six Dramas for Lent
Holy Week at the Jerusalem Café: Six Dramas for Lent