“By periods God created …”
(Gen. 1:1, FFT)
If one wishes to speak about beginnings the book of Genesis is the right place, as its name also indicates. Although it obviously does not simply make clear all the mysteries of the period before time, or of another reality, it does offer a necessary point of departure. But before we start I should offer a disclaimer, in the words of my favourite author, G.K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy (p. 131): “We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest of them all … Every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key; with every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.”
The name of the book of Genesis comes from the Latin Vulgate, which in turn is transliterated from the Greek word γένεσις, which means origin. The Hebrew name בְּרֵאשִׁית, is also part of the first concept with which the book opens, namely “In the beginning.” It is however important to note that the word begin here is actually plural. In other words, what is strictly speaking written here is: IN THE BEGINNINGS.
This book reveals how all things and all conditions and all types of existence came into being. This magical phrase “in the beginnings” encapsulates the emergence of all things in the heavens and on earth, with the exclusion of God, who is necessarily intrinsically part of everything that multiplied from Him, but needs to be outside of this creation dynamic in order to be the Creator of it.
In his distinctive translation of the Bible, the Ferrar Fenton Translation, the author is trying to capture the truth that grounds this phrase, and presents it as: “By periods God created …” If one wants to raise one’s eyebrows about this, consider that the New Testament Heb. 1:10 is also written in the plural: “You, Lord, in the beginning[s] laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.” (Obviously basically no translation translates it as such, although from the Greek it would be absolutely correct to do so.) In the teaching of Day 1295-1297 we explained that the concept, “the Beginnings”, is not about a particular time or starting point. Strong provides the following definition for this word in the original Hebrew: “From the same as H7218; the first, in place, time, order or rank (specifically a firstfruit): – beginning, chief (-est), first (-fruits, part, time), principal thing.” Word lemma H7218, the root word of in the beginning is the following – rô’sh, which is the Hebrew for Head, which clearly points to Jesus Christ!
Jesus the Christ as manifold Wisdom of God (Eph. 3:10) brought about an uncountable number of things in an uncountable amount of ways in his various acts of creation. Heb. 1:2 (AMP) explains this about Jesus: “by and through Whom He created the worlds and the reaches of space and the ages of time [He made, produced, built, operated, and arranged them in order]”. This was also the beginnings of all existing manifestations of life, even the principalities and powers of the heavens (Eph. 3:10), that the Scripture calls “the host[s] of God”. This name is based on one of the Names of God, namely Jehovah Sabaoth, “the Lord of Hosts” (Rom. 9:29, KJV). In Gen. 2:1 this important, concluding remark is made: “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.” There is thus a host of heavenly creatures and earthly creatures.
The beginnings were thus the beginnings of man (Gen. 1:26), but also the beginnings of the Satan. During these beginnings man was pure, innocent and in an intimate relationship with God, but so was the Satan – see Job 1:6-7 where he is presented as one of the “sons of God”. However, during these beginnings man sinned, but this is also true of the Satan. John 8:44 for instance says, “He was a murderer from the beginning[s] …” and 1 John 3:8 notes: “… the devil has sinned from the beginning[s] …” From the beginnings God found that his angels, his called messengers, strayed (Job 4:18)! Ponder this truth for a while – it has enormous implications. In the beginnings there was thus a time of blamelessness and full righteousness, but during this continuum consummation of in the beginnings, in these pockets of eternal time, there was also sin and unrighteousness.
Col. 1:16-17 (KJV) states the full scope of everything that came into being in the beginnings: “For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, …. whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.”
It is of great importance that we realise that on the grounds of Prov. 8:1, Jesus, as the Wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24) was also there in the beginnings! But if everything is created out of Him, He also had to have existed before the other things (Col. 1:17); He does after all say that “the Lord possessed me at the beginning[s] of His way” (Prov. 8:22). But it is also important to notice – while God made the earth, Jesus and the children of men played before Him (verses 30 and 31).
A very important principle concerning the book of Genesis is that this book not only records the stories of how everything came to be. Many people read this first book of the Bible as if everything in it is to be understood literally. But just as the gospels and the book of Revelation, a variety of narration strategies are employed to fully bring the message across. In any of the four gospels, for instance, the real events are presented as a narrative, and are woven together with parable (which are fictional stories, and not true); there are supernatural visits from spiritual beings that is not necessarily everyone’s reality. It is full of intertextual references to other texts, which is meant to act as a prophetic cradle in which new contexts can come into being. If all of it is just read as purely true stories, you will not come to a full understanding of what it has to offer.
The same is also the case with Genesis. Let us for instance take the figure of Adam as an example. Was he an ordinary earthly man? Yes, and no. He was firstly, for instance, not a mere physical man in the beginnings, with a physical functioning like other people. He was created from the dust of the earth and thus came into being, therefore his name was later ‘âdâm, similar to the dust of the earth from which he was taken, namely ‘ădâmâh. But that dust of the earth was also eternal (Ps. 78:69), as it was grounded before time (Ps. 104:5). And that ground from which he was taken was not yet cursed by God, thus Adam (or Man, as he was actually called) was uncontaminated, eternal earth. The cursing of the earth occurs only after the fall (Gen. 3:17).
The whole story in Gen. 1-3 is also a typology which, through its narrative conventions, tries to explain the seed distribution of the entire gospel, and this is a more and greater issue than the simple narrative of the disobedience of the first man. Was Adam thus also literally the beginning of humanity? Yes, indeed, as in the genealogy of Jesus that is presented in Luke 3, fatherhood is drawn back to the flesh until “the son of Adam, the son of God”. But in Gen. 5:1 it is also spelled out in these terms: “This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.” What could this possibly imply?
- Selah: What could this possibly imply?
- Read: 2 Cor. 1-6
- Memorise: 2 Cor. 1:22
- For a more in-depth understanding: Read G.K. Chesterton’s magnificent Orthodoxy.
