In the Beginning

by Isaac Asimov

  Thus, the accident of the existence of seven visible planets; the fact that the Babylonians tied these in, astrologically, with the days of the week; the further fact that the writers of the P-document kept the Babylonian week but sanitized it and tied it in with the tale of Creation-make it inevitable that we continue to use an unnecessarily clumsy and inconvenient calendar despite the fact that it could so easily be patched up.

  4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, 63 in the day 64 that the Lord God 65 made the earth and the heavens,

  63. This phrase ends the P-document Creation-tale with a final summarizing sentence that can be paraphrased into modern language as “These are the stages by which the heavens and earth were created.”

  64. Here the artificial division of the books of the Bible into verses creates an infelicity, for this verse places in a single sentence the ending of one Creation-tale and the beginning of another, with only a comma to separate the two.

  In the Revised Standard Version, a period replaces the comma, and the second part of the verse begins a new paragraph, thus:

  “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

  “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,”—notice that the verse ends in a comma; the second sentence is incomplete and is continued in the next verse.

  It seems reasonable to ask how we know that we have here a second Creation-tale. The traditional view, after all, is that the entire Bible is divinely inspired by God. word for word, and that it can therefore contain no errors and certainly no internal contradictions (except those introduced by faulty copying or erroneous translation).

  From that standpoint, this second tale is supposed to supplement the first one and be in accord with it; therefore it is not really a second tale at all, merely a more detailed version of the first one concentrating on the creation of humanity.

  The second Creation-tale is so different from the first in so many of its details, and has a so-distinctly more primitive atmosphere, that to make it fit the first one requires tortuous reasoning and argument. It is much simpler and more straightforward (if one can bear to abandon the theory of divine inspiration) to recognize that we have one Creation-tale based on the best science of the day and a second one that is a folktale derived from relatively unsophisticated sources.

  Probably, the second tale was the one current in at least parts of Israel well before the Babylonian exile, and it was so well known that it simply could not be left out of the Bible. Therefore, the editors who put the Bible into its present form, while putting the P-document Creation-tale first, also put in the earlier, more primitive tale second and relied on ingenious interpretation to explain away any contradictions.

  65. The clearest indication of the switch from one tale to another is the reference to “Lord God” in this verse; in the first 34 verses of the Bible, the reference has been only to “God.”

  The Hebrew word translated here as “Lord” consists of four letters, which transliterated into the nearest English equivalents would be YHVH. Rationalist interpretation of the Bible was first advanced by German scholars, however, so that the four letters are frequently seen as JHWH, since the German J and W are pronounced like the English Y and V. YHVH, or JHWH, is referred to as the tetragrammaton, from Greek words meaning four letters.

  The tetragrammaton represents the personal name of God, and the mere fact that it is used in the verse, whereas earlier it was not used, is an indication that we are now dealing with a second writer or a second source. (Reasons have been advanced for the change in an attempt to avoid assuming a second document—such as saying that “God” represents the deity in his aspect of stern justice, and “Lord God” in his aspect of loving mercy—but such reasons sound artificial and unconvincing. It is much easier to accept the fact that the early chapters of Genesis are derived from two different sources.)

  The difference in name is itself an indication that the second Creation-tale is more primitive than that described by the P-document. The assumption that the transcendent deity has a name after the fashion of human beings is very much like the assumption that he has a body shaped like ours or emotions like ours, and the P-document avoids it.

  “Lord” is not the name of God, by the way, and it is not a translation of YHVH. Actually, we don’t know what the translation of YHVH is exactly; that is, what it means in English. Apparently, it gets across the idea of TO BE in all its tenses. YHVH is “that which is, was, and shall be,” and if that is indeed what it means or implies then one can hardly think of a better name for an eternal God.

  As the Jews’ concept of God grew ever more exalted and abstract, they did not wish to profane the holy name by even pronouncing it, so the custom grew of substituting a title for the name. Whenever YHVH appeared in the Biblical text or in a liturgy, the Jews would say Adonai (meaning “the Lord”) instead. Therefore, YHVH Elohim became Adonai Elohim, which is translated “the Lord God.”

  The Hebrew language in its written form consists of consonants only. The vowels are not included, but to people who know the language, that does not matter.

  As Hebrew became less familiar to the Jews, however, and as the common language of everyday use became Aramaic in Persian times, it became customary to make the vowel sounds in Hebrew by diacritical marks under the letters so that those unfamiliar with Hebrew could pronounce the words correctly. For YHVH, however, the vowels indicated were those for Adonai, since that was all one was supposed to say.

  Using those vowels, YHVH became “Yehovah” or (later, because of German influence) “Jehovah.” Either way, that is not the name of God, because the vowels are wrong.

  We cannot say for sure what the name is, for there is no record of the correct vowels in the cautious writings of the Jews. (Only the high priest was supposed to pronounce the actual name of God, and that only when he was alone in the Holy of Holies within the Temple and only at the time of Yom Kippur—and there hasn’t been a high priest or a Temple, in the Biblical sense of the term, for 1,900 years.)

  It is thought that the name of God is Yahveh (which may also be spelled Jahveh, Jahweh, or even Jawe).

  The second Creation-tale is therefore part of the J-document, where the J stands for the first letter of the tetragrammaton in its German version.

  It also happens that the J-document consists of legends current in the southern part of the territory occupied by the tribes of Israel, the part that between 933 B.C. and 586 B.C. made up the Kingdom of Judah. The J of the J-document can therefore just as aptly stand for Judah.

  5 And every plant of the. field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God hod not caused it to rain upon the earth, 66 and there was not a man to till the ground.

  66. The language of the King James Version is not very clear here. If we were telling the tale in colloquial English, the last part of the preceding verse, together with this one, would read: “When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens there was, to begin with, no vegetation, for there was no rain, and no parson had yet been created to till the ground.”

  In the P-document Creation-tale, which borrowed heavily from the Babylonians, water predominated first, chaotically, and on the third day, God had to push the water aside and allow the dry land to emerge. This is an appropriate assumption as to the original state of the world for the Babylonians, who are a river civilization and who have to contend with flood constantly. The dry land seems a precious asset to them, to be won with difficulty from the encroaching waters.

  The J-document Creation-tale also borrowed from Babylonian legend, but less selectively and over a longer period of time, during which changes could be introduced to suit the circumstances of a different locale. The Judeans were essentially a desert people, and to them it was dry land that was natural, even excessive, while water was a precious commodity to be viewed as a gift of God.

  The J-document, then, starts wi
th a dry and barren Earth that bears no life. Nor is there any mention of light, sky, or heavenly bodies. The full focus is on Earth and humanity. This is a more limited concept of Creation than that of the P-document, but the J-document assumption of an Earth that is dry to begin with is closer to the scientific point of view than the P-document’s assumption of an Earth that is wet to begin with.

  6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.67

  67. The Hebrew word ayd, of which “mist” is the translation given in the King James, is a rare word that occurs in only one other place in the Bible (Job 36:27). The translation is not certain; it could be a “flow of water” or even a “flood.”

  It is very tempting to suppose that it refers to an uprising of water from the primordial dry ground to form the oceans and other waters of the Earth. Thus, whereas the P-document forms the dry land by separating it from the primordial muddy ocean, the J-document forms the ocean by producing it from the primordial dry land.

  Here again it is the J-document, the more primitive of the two, that is closer to the scientific view of the Earth’s origins—surprisingly close in this respect. As I explained earlier, the oceans and atmosphere are thought to have formed secondarily, as the solid material of the originally dry and airless Earth slowly evolved its separate layers.

  7 And the Lord God farmed man of the dust of the ground, 68 and breathed Into his nostrils the breath of life; 69 and man became a living soul.70

  68. Presumably, once there was water, it could be mixed with clay and a man could be formed just as a potter would form a pot. In fact, from the wording of this verse, one has an unavoidable picture of the Lord God actually playing the role of potter and physically shaping the figure of a man.

  It is common for legends of the beginning of human beings to state them to have been formed of clay and to have been molded by a divine being. This is true of legends in Egypt, Babylonia, and Greece. In the Greek tales, the Titan, Prometheus, molded the first human beings out of clay.

  However natural the assumption of man-as-a-complex-pot in a primitive age when the potter’s wheel was the most delicate known technique for forming complex shapes, it is far out of line with the modern scientific view. The atoms in clay are not at all the kind that are common in living tissue. If the description had been of man being formed of coal dust and water, it would have been more impressive.

  The Hebrew word for man in this verse is adam, and the Hebrew word for dust is adamah. This is not a coincidence. Primitive people do not imagine words to be simple inventions. It seems natural to them, as said earlier in the book, to imagine that a name belongs to a thing as an integral part and that to the name is associated all the characteristics of the thing itself.

  If two words are similar, it would then bespeak some sort of connection between the things. It is as though one were to wonder why a large rope is called a “hawser” and then decide it is because one would have to be as strong as a horse to break it. This sort of thing is called word-play when it is meant in fun, folk etymology if it is meant seriously. The early books of the Bible are full of folk etymology.

  If the words adam and adamah had just happened to be similar, it would have been taken as good evidence that man was originally made of dust. It might also be that adam arose from adamah after the legend was established, replacing an older word for man—or the other way around to replace an older word for dust.

  Notice that in the P-document Creation-tale, man is formed last of all living things and by the word of God alone, as nearly as we can tell. This creation is the climactic act, and man is brought into a Universe that has been prepared for him to the last detail.

  In the J-document, on the other hand, man is formed first of all living things. God physically shapes him as a potter would, bringing him forth into a barren world and then arranging a suitable environment for him. This is a much more primitive concept.

  69. Even with God himself as potter, the clay figure that results, however marvelous in appearance, is quite as dead as the original lump. To make it more than clay requires the divine magic of life. This constitutes the breath that, as I explained earlier, represents the Spirit of God. In other words, a nonliving shaped object of matter was infused with a bit of the Spirit of God and became alive.

  From the modern scientific view, however, we know that the breath is as material as the rest of the body and will not suffice to represent the immaterial essence of either life or God. In fact, there is no material thing that is the essence of life, but rather the complexity of organization that brings it into being. Life is a biochemical-biophysical process, rather than a thing.

  To have the verse approach scientific language more closely, one might paraphrase it something as follows: “And the Lord God formed man out of clay and then imposed upon the clay the complexity of organization characteristic of life.”

  70. “Soul” is the translation of the Hebrew nephesh, and it is very difficult to tell what it means. The chances are that the best translation would be “and man became a living being.”

  Nowadays, a common view of the soul is that it is some sort of spiritual essence, utterly immaterial, that is inserted into a person at birth (or at conception) and that departs from a person at death; that it is an immortal component of man that is neither born nor dies but is housed in the body for the brief period of that body’s existence on Earth. All this is actually derived from Greek thought, and in that sense, “soul” is a translation of the Greek psyche and not of the Hebrew nephesh.

  From the scientific viewpoint, there is no evidence in favor of the existence of a soul or of any immaterial essence that departs at death. What happens at death is that the complex organization of the living organism breaks down to the point where what remains is insufficient to maintain the complex of chemical and physical changes we call life.

  In recent years, there have been reports of people who were “clinically dead” and who, upon revival, tell stories that sound as though they have experienced an afterlife. These are subjective reports elicited by eager questioners from very sick people; as far as I know, no reputable biologist takes the reports seriously.

  8 And the Lord God planted a garden 71 eastward in Eden; 72 and there he put the man whom he had formed.73

  71. According to the J-document, it is only after the man had been created that God proceeded to make the earth suitable for him to live in. Food, in the form of vegetation, was created for him.

  In the P-document, the creation of vegetation was described as, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass—” and the word of God was sufficient.

  It might be that this occurred in the J-document when the “mist … watered the whole face of the ground,” but the J-document does not specifically say so—though I suppose it might be argued that it goes without saying. (This is a dangerous argument. If one thing goes without saying, almost anything can.)

  Even if the garden here described is only a patch of land particularly suited to the needs of the man God had created in a world that was already covered with vegetation, it is interesting that God “planted” that garden.

  One might again argue that God planted it with a word, nothing more, and that this, too, goes without saying. The actual use of the word “planted” without further explanation inevitably gives rise, however, to the image of God as a farmer as well as of a potter—which fits the generally primitive nature of the J-document.

  72. Where was Eden, within which the Garden was located? There have been incredible quantities of speculation about this, some of it pretty wild. Actually, however, there may be no mystery about it at all.

  In the first place, it was “eastward”; eastward, that is, from the place where the tale was told; eastward from the land of Israel, in other words.

  To the east of Israel is the Tigris-Euphrates valley. The first civilization to exist in the lower reaches of this valley was that of the Sumerians, and in the Sumerian language, the word eden m
eans “plain.”

  No one knows where, exactly, the Sumerians came from, but if, as seems likely, they originally entered the area from the hilly regions to the northeast, they may well have thought of themselves as coming to Eden; that is, to the “plain.”

  Furthermore, the hilly regions may well have been areas where it was hard to find food, while in the plain along the lower Tigris and Euphrates, there was marvelous farmland. With the proper irrigation from the waters of the rivers, the harvests were plentiful, the land bountiful, the living good. To the Sumerians it was like coming to a garden in the plain—a “garden in Eden.”

  Things may not have stayed wonderful for long. As population increased, food became harder to get. Warfare came as the Sumerian city-states squabbled with each other. There may well have grown a longing for the earliest days in Sumeria, when the land was really a “garden of Eden,” until the phrase came to symbolize a golden age of the past, which may have only been vaguely identified with the actual region in which the Sumerians continued to live and which was no longer in a golden age.

  In Hebrew, eden means “delight” or “enjoyment,” but this is merely an accidental similarity of sound with the Sumerian eden, for the two languages are not related. (In fact, Sumerian is not related to any known language.) Nevertheless, the accidental Hebrew meaning helped crystallize the feeling that Eden might be a mystical term without actual geographic meaning and that the place originally inhabited by mankind was merely “the garden of delight,” with no place name at all.

  It seems pretty reasonable, however, to suppose that what the verse is really saying is that “the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Sumeria.”

  73. It would seem, then, by this verse, that the first man lived in Sumeria.

  From the scientific view this is not so. The first creatures that can be considered hominids, it seems fairly certain, evolved in eastern Africa, in what is now the region of Kenya and Tanzania. It may have been only after hundreds of thousands of years that hominids reached the Tigris-Euphrates valley. (On the other hand. we don’t know yet where the first creatures that might be considered Homo sapiens originated.)