By Rev. Dr. Joe Weaks
Pastor, Connection Christian Church
The Bible begins with two distinct creation stories in the book of Genesis. The first story contains a litany of days where an unseen and cosmic God speaks creation into existence.
Day 1… let there be light. BOOM!
Day 3… let there be plants. BOOM!
Day 5… let there be animals. BOOM!
Each moment, each creative detail one after another, day by day, is spoken into existence and is immediately declared perfect. And then on day 6, human beings are spoken into existence as the final act, the climax to the whole planned liturgy of creation.
The second creation story is much different. It presents a God personified as toiling in the dust in a creative process, trying things out, and shaping the creation as they go. In this story, before any animals or plants exist, God begins by creating a human being from the dust of the ground. Then God creates a garden and trees and plants. Later God decides the human being should not be alone, and in an attempt to find companionship, creates animals and birds from the same dust of the ground. But in the end none of these make for the ideal companion, so God tries a new plan and divides the human being into two, and the whole story becomes this ongoing process of experimentation.
While doing my PhD in Biblical Interpretation at TCU, I loved studying how the Hebrew scribes used various sources to compile the collection of scrolls that became scripture. They recognized stories from different sources, different streams of the Israelite tradition, and compiled them together. Often these distinct sources bear unique characteristics, like how God is understood.
The two creation stories clearly come from two different traditions; they each use different names for God. In the first story, God is always called ELOHIM in the Hebrew, whereas in the second story, it always adds the word YAHWEH to God’s name. In each story we witness not only different names for God but distinct characterizations of who God is and how God interacts with the creation. It would have been easy to include just one story of creation, but so many times over the scribes of the Bible included a diversity of voices to increase the fullness of our understanding of who God is. And I think that’s a pretty amazing bit about the Bible.
Rev. Dr. Joe Weaks has worked as a pastor and scholar for over thirty years. Following a Business degree from The University of Texas at Austin, where he began studies of Classical Greek, Dr. Joecompleted an M.Div. at Brite Divinity School and was ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). After completing a Ph.D. in Biblical Interpretation at TCU on biblical source criticism and the interrelations of the gospels, he has taught at colleges and seminaries in Texas and Missouri while pastoring churches. He currently serves with his wife Rev. Dr. Dawn Weaks as co-pastor at Connection Christian Church here in Odessa.
