Creation Creator and Creation

In Gods vergeten Woord 9 Schepping 1 Scheppingsplan en Schepper and its continuation Gods vergeten Woord 10 Schepping 2 Schepper en Schepping Rudolf Rijkeboer looks at the creation and the one or ones behind it.

Also at the new website “Messiah for all” is looked at the beginning of all times, because that is a very important element to come to the understanding of our present situation and why things turned out this way. When we do understand what happened in the beginning of times and come to understand what was provided, we can build up hope and find reasons enough to believe in that One and Only Creator and His promises.

Book of Genesis, Ningpo Bible. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course there is the characteristic that the God of the Bible is an “only” God, while in most other religions there is a polytheism. But the difference goes deeper. It has been said that the purpose of religion is to provide a way to salvation. In other words, religion must be capable to lead man the way in its efforts to move from its present imperfection to perfection (see Section 5 for the biblical answer to the question of the target). In that context, there has to be little difference in principle between the “great religions” because they all meet this definition. Yet on closer inspection there are indeed important distinctions to be designated. To see that, we should return to the more primitive “ancestors” of the non-Biblical religions.

At the end of the 19th century originated in archaeological, as well as theological circles considerable excitement when at deciphering Babylonian clay tablets a “creation story” was discovered. They immediately assumed that here the primitive forerunner of the first chapter of the book of Genesis in his hands. As more was discovered and was been translated, however, increasingly they had to let this vision go. The story talked about a couple of primordial beings that conceived the first gods and gave birth. These gods then defeated that primordial being and took power. Of one of the primordial beings the body was split and out of the halves, it is been told, came heaven and earth. Another god was cut open and out of his blood arose other beings of flesh and blood, called man.

What stands out in the above is the following. The gods are not creators but created beings themselves! They have not existed from eternity, but came into being or to occur somewhere at the beginning of time. While their ‘agents’ themselves are no actual gods, but rather the “substance” from which they arose: a primordial sea, a primary principle, a primal matter. Once the gods appear on the scene, they occur to be “oerbeginselen”or rudimentary elements therefore back or be the foundation of the cosmos (the ordered world). The first appearance of the gods is not so much a conscious act of creation as a come about almost by chance. In turn, they are also not the actual creators of heaven and earth and life. Those things caused by their activities, but then almost casually, hardly according to plan. Insofar as the cosmos in this thinking may be described as creation, it can be said that the gods are part of this creation.

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 Preceding article: Between Alpha and Omega – The plan of creation

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Please find additionally to read:

1. Genesis 1 story does not take away an evolution
2. Something from nothing
3. Bible and Science (2): In the Beginning
4. Suboptimal design and special creation
5. Bible and Science: Scientific Facts and Theories
6. Cosmogony

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Related articles

• Vos on Creation (greenbaggins.wordpress.com)
  

  How many kinds of interpretation are there of Genesis 1 and 2? Mainly three: the allegorical, the mythical and the historical. The first two views, however, are untenable because within the narrative of Scripture the creation narrative is interwoven like a link in the chain of God’s saving acts. God does not make a chain of solid gold, in which the first link is a floral wreath. If the creation history is an allegory, then the narrative concerning the fall and everything further that follows can also be allegory. The writer of the Pentateuch presents his work entirely as history (Reformed Dogmatics, volume 1, p. 161).

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  May those who are motivated by the desire to look respectable in the world of academia take note that Vos was not afraid of what others might say, and he feared God rather than men.

• Did Plato influence the Book of Genesis? (lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com)
  Now the belief among Orthodox Jews is that the book of Genesis is very old, but as the web page points out, there are no outside historically dated references to the book of Genesis until the second century B.C., which is two hundred years after the founding of Plato’s Academy. This all fits in with a general pattern I’ve pointed out before that Judaism isn’t as old as people think it is.
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  By Jesus’ time the Jews in Palestine were thoroughly Hellenized, and the most common version of the Old Testament in Jewish synagogs was the Greek language Septuagint, precisely because many more Jews spoke and read Greek than Hebrew. The Septuagint is still used by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox.
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  Biblical scholars agree that the oral transmission of the mythos became textual at the latest with the Unified Kingdom of Israel (~900 BC). To disregard the oral transmission of culture to present an alternative hypothesis is almost disingenuous, but that’s what you get with academia today who have tofabricate new “scholarship”.It isn’t shocking to find parallels between Plato and Genesis – great minds think alike.

  And also, some have complained that Plato ripped off Moses:

  http://www.iep.utm.edu/philo/

  https://itself.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/a-further-problem-for-the-hellenization-thesis-plato%E2%80%99s-familiarity-with-moses/
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  The Hebrew God is an omnipotent, unknowable entity, while the actions of Greek deities and their explanations of natural phenomena are quite more intuitive. For example, winter lasts for three months a year because Hades reunites with his wife, Persephone, for that time. A neat (if you ignore Hades’ rape of his wife), easy to grasp story on the origins of one of the four seasons.
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  he monotheistic cult of Yahweh was probably the specialty of the Priestly and scribal sects within ancient Israel, with the general population vascillating back and forth in their singular devotion to the national God, who effectively competed against other regional Semitic deities for devotees. A careful reading of the Hebrew scriptures shows that those who codified those oral traditions and histories into writing were on the side of the Priestly cult in trying to send the propagandistic message that Israel’s history demonstrates their need to put aside all other Gods and follow Yahweh alone.

• Ways of Reading Genesis 1 (CTP class) (unsettledchristianity.com)
  At no point should you read this entire passage and be done discussing it within an hour. Why? Because not only do have to decide if this is poetry, myth, literature, history, or science (or a mixture of some or all these modern categories) but then you need to talk about how it sets within the Exilic context. Maybe the sun, moon, and stars are really just luminary bodies and not Babylonian gods. Then you have to talk about what it means when God said “it is good.” Then you get to the Genesis 1.26-27 and so on.
• Designed for Flight – Creation Moments TV (leesbird.com)
  Creation Moments articles have been used here many times. Now they have a YouTube Channel called Creation Moments TV.
• Bible Daily Devotional – Lev 23 – Celebration Calendar (ptl2010.com)
  Remember, back in Genesis, when God created the sun and moon? He said they were for signs, and for seasons (a word that also means appointed times or feast days). God created them to give light, but also to frame the calendar year. The calendar was essential for the feast or festival days that, in turn, were essential to Jewish life. Leviticus 23 gives a full accounting of the sacred celebrations, but before we look at those, we need a little astronomy lesson.
• What evidence is there of a spiritual realm? (disciplesofhope.wordpress.com)
  The Bible teaches the existence of an immaterial, spiritual reality, unseen by human eyes. The physical reality is evident for all to see—although some doubt the existence of a material universe, too!
• The Lost World of Adam and Eve (jacksonwu.org)
  How one responds to the Genesis/creation debate could either be destructive or constructive.
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  Genesis Is an Ancient Document
  an Account of Functional Origins, Not Material Origins
  In Genesis 1 God Orders the Cosmos as Sacred Space