Genesis 1-3. Tilling, Naming, and Loving
“… there was no man to till the ground … then the Lord God formed man …
the Lord God formed every beast … and brought them to the man to see what he would call them …
the Lord God … made a woman and brought her to the man… Therefore a man … cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
The Religion vs Science Debate Confuses the Wisdom of Genesis 1-3.
When people relate the biblical creation stories to modern science, they easily presuppose conflict between the two. There is certainly conflict if, for example, we look in the Bible to know the age of the universe or if we try to use scientific methods to determine whether a purely spiritual being—God—exists and brought forth the universe from nothing.
We can avoid such superficial conflicts between science and religion if we recognize that science does not prove or disprove anything about spiritual realities and that religious ideas are not sufficient to understand physical realities. We have designed the scientific method to measure the movement of physical matter in one form or another. Physics studies the most basic physical substance and the movement of all material things. Chemistry studies how physical substances interact with each other. Biology studies how those physical substances work in the bodies of living things. But studying the movement of matter does not prove or disprove the existence of spiritual realities, such as God, purely spiritual creatures such as angels and demons, or even a spiritual human soul united to a human body. Similarly, the study of spiritual realities alone does not enable us to define the structure and movement of physical realities. For that we need careful study that includes a method--the modern scientific method, for example--for closely observing physical realities.
Studying realities that are both spiritual and material is the most difficult inquiry. We are trying to understand physical characteristics, which we can sense directly, and spiritual characteristics, which we cannot, and we are trying to understand how all those characteristics coexist in the same being. Some people--the more scientifically minded among us--are more attracted to study the physical characteristics; others to study the spiritual ones. But studying these realities well requires a three-fold discipline: to consider all the characteristics--both physical and spiritual--to consider them all together, and to recognize that some knowledge is beyond our comprehension.
The creation story at the beginning of the Bible concentrates our attention on the union of physical and spiritual realities. In a common interpretation of this story, everything human beings eventually encounter originates in a single, unique spiritual being: God. The very first verses of Genesis typically receive two kinds of translation in the modern era. One translation states unambiguously that God created everything other than God, out of nothing: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Revised Standard Translation--Catholic) The other translation, often found among Jewish scholars, is more ambiguous about creation from nothing or from pre-existing matter: “1 When God began to create heaven and earth—2 the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water.” (Jewish English Translation)
Regardless of the translation, that God created everything out of nothing seems more probable, and the implications are important. If it is true that God created everything that exists, then everything has a spiritual origin in God. If that is the universe that really exists, then we cannot avoid asking how this preeminent spiritual reality, God, relates to the physical realities we encounter. God not only would be the Creator, but also could intervene in the natural movement of creatures, and redeem humanity from its falleness. By contrast, other ancient Near Eastern creation stories conceived their gods as forces and causes in physical things that already existed. Those gods made new environments, but out of existing material. If that is how the world really exists, it would make sense to study material things without regard to any particular spiritual origin. We simply work with the physical world as gods do, but probably with less power.
Notice how the Genesis creation story puts spiritual and physical realities together. In Genesis 1, we find every physical thing represented: the heavens above and the earth below, every body of water, the land, and every wild thing that swims, walks, and flies. Similarly, in Genesis 2, Adam and Eve see beautiful, bountiful trees and all kinds of animals, and they till the land for food. In the same story, we find the preeminent spiritual reality, God, and human beings, into whom God breathed His spirit. God exists before anything else does and therefore stands apart from, or beyond the physical universe. God creates by speaking things into existence, not by working them as if on a potter’s wheel. Then God judges everything good. We see God creating deliberately through a process that transcends physical matter: conceiving the ideas of things, speaking them, and judging them good.
The Creation Story is Wisdom Literature.
The Genesis creation story may cause us to think about when God created, but it does not answer that question, which is more effectively addressed by modern scientific methods. Instead, as biblical scholars have observed, the creation story contributes directly to the wisdom tradition of the Bible. Biblical wisdom offers guidance about relationships and activity, including goals for contemporary science today, their applications in fields like engineering and medicine, and their practices and technologies. Wisdom also includes skill in making things, virtue in thinking, choosing, and acting in a morally upright way, and the conduct of a wide variety of relationships, from the stranger to the most intimate.
In Genesis 1, God creates an environment in which human beings can deliberate and act. God creates everything, everything God creates is good, and God does it in an orderly way by distinguishing one thing from another: light from darkness, heaven from earth and land from water, and then by causing plants and animals to flourish. Finally, God gives human beings a set of purposes, to “be fruitful and multiply” and exercise “dominion” over creation. The result is a world in which human beings can find purpose and create effectively, like God, but without foolishly thinking that they are gods. People act by distinguishing between one thing and another, considering the beauty and goodness of things they encounter, recognizing how some things are useful, deliberating about what is good to do, doing what is good, and then reflecting back to judge whether they did well.
In order to deliberate and act, human beings need to account for change. They need to measure. Notice in Genesis 1:14 that God created “lights in the … heavens … for signs and for seasons and for days and years,” in other words, for marking the passage of time. Imagine human beings observing the movements of “swarms of living creatures, … birds … sea monsters and every living creature that moves.” (1:20-21) Observing change in physical things and telling time enable us to make scientific measurements, to understand an order in the physical world, and to use that knowledge to act effectively, changing our circumstances for the better. We can imagine future action and plan, track natural cycles of generation, growth, and death, identify seasons and times for the most important human activities, which in ancient times were worship, planting, herding, and harvesting crops and animals. Telling time involves reasoning and intelligence, which transcend the physical movements in the world that we use to tell time. In the vision of Genesis, physical things originate in spiritual activity and exist not only for their own sake, but for our spiritual purposes.
God gives humanity a lofty (but not absolute) place in creation and a set of meaningful purposes to pursue. Here again the Bible speaks of spiritual realities that transcend physical ones. Each human being bears God’s image, a sign of superior dignity that nonetheless subordinates humanity to God, the original. Human beings are not slaves to various gods, as they are in a rival creation story, the Enuma Elish, widely known in ancient times. Rather, human beings resemble the one God, become “fruitful and multiply,” exercise dominion over all other creatures to feed themselves and to nourish their spiritual life, as they gaze upon and wonder about the world in which they exist. They do not have to recognize these purposes and meaning by themselves, for God has created people capable of conversation, and actually speaks to them, as they speak among themselves.
Genesis 2 begins with a curious detail that subtly suggests that humanity’s work is to collaborate with God. Genesis 2:5 says that “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” there was “no plant of the field … in the earth” and “no herb of the field … sprung up” (2:5) The comment is curious because, according to Genesis 1:11-12, God had caused vegetation to grow before creating human beings. Then, the same verse explains that there were no plants and herbs “in the field” because “the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the ground.” The seemingly out of place reference to plants and herbs of the field refers to agriculture, the most common work in the ancient world. In this way, the verse implies that nothing yet exists that God and man have created together. God fills this gap in creation with “a mist [that] went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground” and a “man of dust from the ground” into whom God breathed “the breath of life.” (2:7) From this point on, there can exist things that God and human beings create together, and everything that human beings do, they do in relation to God.
Genesis 2 portrays Adam performing three human activities that, by extension, stand for all the human activities that nourish the body, the spirit, and human relationships. Adam is created to till the ground, which by extension stands for any kind of good, productive work. Adam also names the animals, which stands for the human ability to distinguish different kinds of things from each other, reason about them, understand them, consider their various uses, and use them for contemplation. Finally, Adam cleaves to Eve in marriage, which stands for all the other kinds of relationships--social, economic, political--that family relationships make possible, necessary and desirable. Genesis 2 represents each of Adam’s activities, and by extension all kinds of working, thinking, and loving, as collaborations in which God and human beings create things together.
In Genesis 2, God continues to create an environment for human beings to act, yet the environment in this part of the story is a moral ecology of trust among human beings and between human beings and God. In modern political philosophy, moral ecology refers to a shared set of ideas, values and practices that enable people to view of the world in a similar way and to cooperate in a common set of purposes. Genesis 2 advances a set of ideas about the relationship between God and humanity, about humanity's purposes, the benefits of collaboration with God and about the consequences of opposing God. For example, in this part of the creation story God provides for all of humanity’s physical and spiritual needs. God gives humanity a limited but powerful sphere of action, symbolized by a well-watered garden-like world filled with fruitful trees to tend and use for survival, discovery and enjoyment. To act well in this limited but powerful sphere of action, God provides wisdom, symbolized by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But this tree is God’s to tend, for God is the unique source of wisdom.
Ancient Hebrew scribes eventually express the wisdom that the Hebrews receive from God in proverbs, stories, laws, psalms and poetry that we find later in the Bible. But here in the beginning, the story of creation insists that wisdom originates in God, who gives it to human beings, and warns against supposing that this knowledge could be gained one one’s own. It seems fitting then that in Genesis 2, God gives wisdom in the form of a command with serious consequences for violating it: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (2:16-17) Although the consequences of violating the command are harsh, notice that Adam and Eve still have wisdom. The command presumes their knowledge that it is good to follow the command and evil to violate it.
They possess wisdom like a gift, in the sense that one person gives it to another, who then possesses and uses it. Human beings have no need to touch the tree of knowledge, to take wisdom, because God gives it to them. Wisdom is originally a spiritual reality, not a material one, so the tree of knowledge is not an actual physical tree. Just as fruit trees are the source of bodily nourishment and enjoyment, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents the source of wisdom that guides human beings’ fruitful, enjoyable collaboration with each other and with God. This shared understanding about wisdom enables humanity and God to work together, to communicate, and to trust each other.
Genesis 2 depicts the three paradigmatic human purposes, working, thinking, and loving--in the three kinds of activities that Adam performs: tilling, naming and cleaving. Tilling collaborates with God in agriculture. The creation story portrays God providing not only rain, fertile ground, and plant life, but also the human person created from “dust,” dependent upon the land and able to use the body to work it. Human beings discover how to cultivate plants and provide labor. Then there comes an abundance of food and flower to satisfy hunger and delight the senses. By extension, tilling might also represent other kinds of human work, all of which are a kind of collaboration with God: raising animals for food or service, anything people manufacture, creating artistic works, and providing a service. Some of these things, like plants and animals, exist without human labor, but not in the form they can take with human understanding and work.
To take one modern example, medicine, our efforts to discover how the body works, to heal it from injury, and to improve its performance represent another kind of tilling. We “till” the body by scientific experiment to “harvest” knowledge about how it works. We develop medical practices and technology to intervene in its processes and heal or enhance it. As we become wise to the land by tilling, so we become wise to the body by practicing biological science and medicine.
Adam also names the animals, but naming the animals means more than finding a word that represents each one. God seems more interested in observing the man’s mind at work than in knowing human names for things. God already knows that a man needs a helper and that the animals are not “fit” helpers, but God brings them anyway, in order “to see what he would call them,” that is, to see if he can tell who will make a fit helper. Naming implies that Adam recognizes the characteristics of those animals, distinguishes them from each other, and finally distinguishes himself from all other animals, recognizing that no animal is “a helper fit for him.” Contrast Adam’s excitement when God finally brings him the woman, and he exclaims “This at last is bone of my bones/and flesh of my flesh.” (2:23)
If we look at Adam’s naming the animals the context of the whole story, he is surely also determining how to profitably use the animals and exercising “dominion.” The intellectual moves implied in “naming the animals” were recognized by the ancient mind. In the ancient Greek world, for example, Aristotle famously classified plants and animals according to their characteristics, and modern science is founded upon this practice in ancient Greek philosophy. Similarly, the ancient Hebrews were keen to distinguish among animals, and Adam’s “naming” implies their practice of reserving some of them for work, others for food, others for sacrifice, and others simply to wonder about. Their use of animals represented a kind cooperation with God, who created them “good.”
By extension, “naming the animals” can refer to distinguishing other kinds of things and what each is good for. We distinguish poisonous from edible and medicinal plants. We distinguish anatomical functions, understand biological and disease processes, and devise interventions to restore and even enhance functionality. We distinguish chemical substances from each other, discover chemical reaction processes, and imagine various uses for the raw materials we discover and products we create. We analyze the properties and movement of physical materials and use them to build “infrastructure” and to explain the universe. All this creative intellectual activity is another kind of naming that represents humanity’s cooperation with God.
In intellectual and moral life, naming also involves thinking clearly and speaking truthfully. Again Aristotle famously traced out and named the mental movements of logic we use to understand the realities that God created and to evaluate what human activities produce. Moreover, Aristotle investigated, named, and explained the habits of human success, virtues, which lead to happiness, and the habits of failure, vices, which undermine it. The ancient Hebrews expressed such wisdom in the form of laws and proverbs. Later in the Bible, the Ten Commandments prohibit foolish ways of pursuing human purposes, avoid the social and relational distortions of moral compromise, and redirect people away from the descent into wickedness. Laws show how the commandments apply to different areas of life. Proverbs and other literary conventions of the wisdom books provoke the mind to distinguish wisdom from foolishness, especially when the issues are morally ambiguous and practical knowledge is insufficient.
But at the beginning of the Bible, God’s command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil simply provokes the mind to wonder about morality, its origins, and how to acquire it. On the one hand, the knowledge of good and evil comes from a tree that, like the other trees in the garden, seems to be available to human beings. On the other, it should not be touched. How then, if human beings were created to think and act wisely, can we do so without touching this tree?
We gain insight into this question if we observe Eve’s mind at work as she gazes upon this tree: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, …” (3:6) To human sight, the fruit of a tree does look good for food. Does it delight the eyes? It can. Does eating it bring wisdom about good and evil? Never. In fact, it takes a great deal of self-deception to convince oneself that eating anything brings wisdom. We are particularly vulnerable to self-deception when outside forces, represented by the serpent, introduce false yet appealing ideas. The serpent proposes that human beings can acquire wisdom on their own, apart from God. But human beings cannot take wisdom like they take fruit from a tree. Rather, human beings acquire wisdom as a gift from God. They came into existence, formed from the “dust” in God’s “image,” and like they acquire the land and every other thing they use. They receive wisdom for the purpose of collaborating with God in a relationship of friendship and love.
Some people suggest that Eve is responsible for the first sin because she ate from the forbidden tree first and then gave its fruit to Adam, but this interpretation is a very weak one. Eve supposes that she might gain wisdom by eating from a tree, but this image of self-deception represents a human vulnerability, not a particularly feminine one. Later, the creation and fall story does represent both the feminine vulnerabilities of death during childbirth and domination by males and the masculine vulnerabilities to unproductive work and to dominating others (rather than engaging in spirited competition). But there is no evidence that Adam looked at the tree any differently than Eve did. In fact, his blaming her later in the story falls in line with his other sins, suggesting that he’s equally at fault. Rather, the story emphasizes the common humanity of male and female, which makes them fit for each other, and their common fall.
Their common humanity also enables their act of “cleaving” to establish a new relationship called marriage and to bear offspring. Adam’s cleaving to Eve in marriage is the third paradigmatic act that Adam performs in Genesis 2. In the context of the story, Adam would not have had a father and mother to leave, but he would be alone ... permanently alone. He leaves the state of loneliness when he cleaves to Eve. Every other human being has a father and mother to leave and experience Adam’s kind of loneliness without a spouse. Adam’s cleaving to Eve, and her to him, fulfills a drive--partly sexual, partly for intimate companionship--that has marriage as an endpoint. Entering into marriage expands a person’s permanent relationships. The spouses retain their permanent relationship with their parents as they establish a new permanent relationship with each other. With the coming of children, the spousal relationship generates new parental relationships, which in turn expand to other kinds of human relationships that people form in order to survive and enjoy life: friendships, economic and political relationships, cultural and religious bonds.
When Adam and Eve eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they follow their own version of human wisdom in opposition to God’s wisdom. When they do, these three paradigmatic activities, working, speaking, and loving, fall apart. Their actions fail to achieve the good purposes that God prepared for human beings from the beginning. Instead, their actions bring conflict. Thought and speech, “naming,” are the first to go. Adam immediately and unwittingly incriminates himself by saying “... I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” (3:10) But God knows that he did not create Adam to be ashamed and responds “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (3:11) Adam then uses his speech to blame Eve, who in turn blames the serpent. Their foolish speech gives evidence of their foolish approach to marriage. Now, the dynamics of marital relationship, here represented by some essential characteristics of any relationship: desire, mutual respect, and listening, (16-17) turn conflictual. Finally, the work of tilling becomes unproductive and the work of childbearing becomes painful. All their activities--work, speech, and love--are pursued under the threat of death.
Conclusion
Reading the Genesis creation story as wisdom literature enables us to see how it teaches effective, morally good action in the midst of changing, sometimes chaotic circumstances. The story draws our attention to three paradigmatic activities, working, thinking, and loving, that enable human beings to collaborate with God. In the vision of Genesis, God creates a world in which human beings can act wisely and effectively but with no guarantees of success. The story highlights our ability to observe the “lights in the heavens” as “signs and for seasons and for days and years” and thus to master time by marking its passage and to master space by calculating distance. Consider the advantage these abilities bring to human beings merely to navigate through the world and predict arrival in a certain place. And then consider the advantage to human beings to coordinate their activities. Modern science refines such knowledge, but acting wisely and effectively still requires understanding more than the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. Nor is it sufficient to study human wisdom, for the human mind cannot grasp everything it needs to understand from its worldly environment alone. If it is true, as the vision of Genesis claims, that everything originates in the creative activity of a spiritual being, God, who judges everything good, then wise, effective human activity will try to account for the wisdom active at its origins and use that wisdom to direct human activities.