Gerhard von Rad on Genesis

Snippets from von Rad on Genesis (SCM’s Old Testament Library, 1961).

Even given his theological position and commitment to the documentary hypothesis, von Rad is an ever-stimulating theologian. Thinking through his commentary on Genesis would repay one, irrespective of theological persuasion, in my view.

These snippets are from the first few pages that catch my mind in the context of this blog. Page numbers are in brackets.

First off, he regards Genesis as narrative [13]

[22] the primeval history, which the Yahwist constructed from elements of very different kinds, proclaims first of all with impressive one-sidedness that all corruption, all confusion in the world, comes from sin . .

[31] whatever saga we examine, we find with respect to its simplest and most original purpose that it narrates an actual event that occurred once for all in the realm of history. It is therefore to be taken quite seriously … it is to be “believed.” In all that follows, therefore, let us hold fast to this: by no means is saga merely the product of poetic fantasy … It is mirrored in fact and truth the history of a people.

[33] The Biblical traditions are characterized by a thorough-going economy of expression on the emotional side. What men thought or felt, what moved them, is subordinate to the objective events.

[45] Whoever expounds Gen., ch.1, must understand one thing: this chapter is Priestly doctrine—indeed, it contains the essence of Priestly knowledge in a most concentrated form. It was not “written” once upon a time; … Nothing is here by chance; everything must be considered carefully, deliberately, and precisely. It is false, therefore, to reckon here even occasionally with archaic and half-mythological rudiments, which one considers venerable, to be sure, but theologically and conceptually less binding. What is said here is intended to hold true entirely and exactly as it stands. Nowhere at all is the text only allusive, “symbolic,” or figuratively poetic.

[46] The sequence of particular declarations in vs. 1-3 comprises a theological wealth of reference whose fullness is scarcely to be comprehended. We do not follow the old conjecture that v.1 is not to be understood as an independent sentence but as the introductory clause to v. 2 or even v. 3. . . Syntactically perhaps both translations are possible, but not theologically. . . . To be sure, the notion of a created chaos is itself a contradiction; nevertheless, one must remember that the text touches on things which in any case lie beyond human imagination. . . . God, in the freedom of his will, creatively established for “heaven and earth,” i.e., for absolutely everything, a beginning of its subsequent existence.

[47] It is correct to say that the verb bara, “create,” contains the idea both of complete effortlessness and ‘creatio ex nihilo’, since it is never connected with any statement of the material.

[48] Therefore, we must reject even the assumption that the Priestly document necessarily had to fall back on strange and half mythological ideas to make clear the chaotic primeval state. The terms used in v. 2 are freed from every mythological context; in Israel they had long since become cosmological catchwords, which belonged to the inalienable requisite of Priestly learning. … A comparison with the Ras Shamra mythology leads to essentially the same result. The poets and prophets, it is true, are less troubled about following common Oriental ideas. When one considers the other subjects of Old Testament religious faith, the contents of this verse [vs. 1-2] are unusually daring, for they reach almost speculatively behind creation, i.e., behind what lies palpably before man’s eyes, and they make that peculiar intermediate state between nothingness and creation, i.e., the chaos, the subject of a theological declaration.

[49] Verse 2 teaches one to understand the marvel of creation, therefore, from the viewpoint of its negation; thus it speaks first of the formless and the abysmal out of which God’s will lifted creation and above which it holds it unceasingly.

[49] Immediately and without resistance light fills the world, which was flooded by chaos. In contrast to a few freer poetic declarations, here the creatureliness even of light is emphasized unmistakably . . . . The idea of creation by the word preserves first of all the most radical essential distinction between Creator and creature … The only continuity between God and his work is the Word (Bonhoeffer). Yet it is too much to assert that creation is not a product of the word but is, rather the Word of God itself. One must remember that this method of creation gives the world a susceptibility to God’s word, which will have eschatological consequences. The creative word, in distinction from every human word, is powerful and of the highest creative potency. In the second place, therefore, the idea of creation by the word expresses the knowledge that the whole world belongs to God.

[51] A conspicuous fact about the process of creation is that along with the creative word there is also talk of God’s immediate “making.” This decisive terminological unevenness, which persists clearly throughout the chapter, is the trace of two different conceptions in the report of creation. The first, doubtless the older, moves within the simple framework of the immediate, imaginative creating (“then God made…”); the other speaks of the creation by means of the commanding word.

[52] The Priestly impassive language should not be allowed to gloss over the burning interest of this creative act either. Poets and prophets speak differently of the same things. [list of poetic and prophetic quotes] Here again [referring to Genesis 9-10] the naming! In distinguishing things according to their nature, God therewith also distinguishes terms and names.

[53] 14-19 Fourth day: creation of the stars. The entire passage has a strongly antimythical feeling.

[54] Perhaps the remarkable distinction between the creation of light and the creation of the stars has something to do with this emphasis on their creatureliness. The stars are in no way creators of light, but only mediating bearers of a light that was there without them and before them [which, if we understand light as a synecdoche for the complete energy spectrum, is unsurprising–Eric]
20-23 Now the world is ready as a dwelling place for living creature. All the conditions for life have been given: therefore on the fifth day begins the creation of living creatures. The report first names . . .

[59] 29-30 For nourishment, man is given every kind of vegetable food; the animals are given only the herb of the field. That is the only suggestion of the paradisaical peace in the creation as it came God-willed from God’s hand. Thus, on the other hand, our report of creation places man in striking proximity to the animal. Just as he was created with them on the same day, so he is referred with them to the same table for his bodily needs (K. Barth). Killing and slaughtering did not come into the world, therefore, by God’s design and command. Here too the text speaks not only of prehistoric things, but of declarations of faith, without which the testimony of faith in creation would not be complete. No shedding of blood within the animal kingdom, and no murderous actions by man! This word of God, therefore, means a significant limitation in the human right of domination. The age of Noah knows other orders of life (Gen. 9.2).

[59] This statement, expressed and written in a world full of innumerable troubles, preserves an inalienable concern of faith: no evil was laid upon the world by God’s hand; neither was his omnipotence limited by any kind of opposing power whatever. When faith speaks of creation, and in so doing directs its eye toward God, then it can only say that God created the world perfect.

[60] The Babylonian creation epic also contains a concluding act following the work of creation; it is the public glorification of the god Marduk, in the assembly of the gods, as the chief gods name his fifty names and extol him. How different, how much more profound, is the impressive rest of Israel’s God! This rest is in every respect a new thing along with the process of creation, not simply the negative sign of its end; it is anything but an appendix. Furthermore, it is significant that God “completed” his work on the seventh day (and not, as seems more logical, on the sixth—so the LXX!). This “completion” and this rest must be considered as a matter for itself. One should be careful about speaking of the “institution of the Sabbath,” as is often done. Of that noting at all is said here.

[On the ‘framework’ hypothesis—excursus by Eric:

Von Rad’s analysis of Genesis 1 seems to me to eliminate the credibility of the framework hypothesis. He sees the seven days as an integral unit building climactically to day seven, with the making of the firmament spreading (pun intended), interestingly, over two days. It is worth noting that Von Rad wrote in the mid 1050s, after the hypothesis had been introduced by Noordzij (not Gerrit Noordzij the type face designer, just in case you were wondering) of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands in the early 1950’s. It was later popularised by Ridderbos and has had a more recent airing by Kline with sycophantic adulation by some Sydney Anglicans (John Dickson springs to mind).]

[61] [the report] In essence is not myth and not saga, but Priestly doctrine, i.e., ancient, sacred knowledge, preserved and handed on by many generations of priests...

[62] This account of creation is an amazing theological accomplishment. This account of creation is unique in this respect among the cosmogonies of other religions. This process of inner purification is also evident in the language. Language and expression are concentrated to the utmost on the purely theological; not a word is poetic flourish, there is “no attempt of fantasy to describe the process more closely.” Psalm 104 and other texts show us that Israel also knew how to speak in a different, more lively, way about God’s creation. But the atmosphere of Gen., ch. 1, is not primarily one of reference, awe, or gratitude, but one of theological reflection. The sober monotony of the account, precisely because of this radical renunciation, emphasizes what faith is capable of declaring objectively. But his renunciation also mediates aesthetically the impression of restrained power and lapidary greatness.

[63] The events that are recorded happened once for all and their results are irrevocably permanent. The seven days are unquestionably to be understood as actual days and as a unique, unrepeatable lapse of time in this world. “Creation as God’s work inaugurates time and thus the temporality and finiteness of the world.” Genesis, ch. 1, begins as the work of history, which continues to the revelation at Sinai and the tribal conquest. The author does not speculatively develop a cosmogonic drama, which he can follow with interest as though from a detached point of observation. Rather, his point of reference is wholly within time and within creation … Likewise P resists the temptation of an actual description of the acts of creation. One can speak, therefore, only in a very limited sense of a dependence of this account of creation on extra-Israelite myths. Doubtless there are some terms which obviously were common to ancient Oriental, cosmological thought; but even they are so theologically filtered in P that scarcely more than the word itself is left in common. Considering P’s superior spiritual maturity, we may be certain that terms which did not correspond to his ideas of faith could be effortlessly avoided or recoined. What does the term “tehom” (the “deep”) in v. 2 have in common with the mythically objective world dragon, Tiamat, in the Babylonian creation epic? Genesis, ch. 1, does not know the struggle of two personified cosmic primordial principles; not even a trace of one hostile God can be detected! The tehom has no power of its own; one cannot speak of it at all as though it existed for itself alone …

[64] Israel already found these ideas when she moved into Canaan, where they were common since the second millennium. She brought other ideas, likewise ancient, from her pre-Palestinian dwelling places.

One further note must be made to the inner construction of the whole: the statement in v. 1 embraces the content of the entire chapter. All subsequent statements, which in a certain sense are only unfoldings of this programmatic statement, move basically along the line that is given in the first verse of the chapter: everything was created by God, and there is no creative power apart from him.

[64] One should not deny that P makes his great declarations of faith in the form of, and in closest connection with, the sacred “natural science” of his time. But one may ask, nevertheless, whether there is not more truth in this ancient view than one usually likes to admit. For at stake here are perceptions practiced for centuries and received by a sensory apparatus which perhaps was superior in essential points to our own thoroughly rationalized intellectuality. Nevertheless, great concessions in this respect would have to be thoroughly distinguished from the question of the theological credibility of this witness to God’s creation of the world. Man’s knowledge of natural science, acquired by research of the human spirit, is subject to continual change, nor is the Biblical world view excepted from this law. But in, with, and under the views of their time, our Priestly document has directed its witness to the world creation of the living God. It speaks, therefore, with highest concentration about God … and the way it speaks of God … those are statements which do not originate from, nor agree with, the world view of the ancients.