Genesis: Some Closing Thoughts

Structure, fraternity, and ecology

Having finished my analysis of Genesis, I am struck by several things, not the least of which is the symphonic complexity of the text. Before setting out on this project, I considered Genesis to be largely disparate, full of stories more-or-less concerned with beginnings, mostly in a temporal sense, but with a great deal of thematic discontinuity and even a certain degree of randomness. To a small extent, this is still true, as I’m unsure how to fit certain stories within the overall thematic structure I’ve outlined—not that I consider it necessary that the text display perfect unity—but for the most part I’ve come to see Genesis, viewed in literary terms, as a symphony of closely interrelated patterns.

Everywhere I look in the stories of Genesis I see other stories and themes reflected from elsewhere in the text. There are endless eddies and whirlpools of variation, but they build and nuance each other, offering alterations and interplay of dramatic vision. Indeed, I can’t help but consider my own analysis vastly inadequate given just how much interplay Genesis displays. I suspect it would take a book, or several, to do it justice, and I’ve toyed with the idea of drawing up large outlines, color-coded by theme with each instance of a pattern tied to every other. I still might do just that, if I find the time. For now, I have to content myself with ruminating on the book’s themes and variations, especially when I get around to re-reading, and how its structure and themes relate to the wider world of literature. Genesis forms a foundation for the rest of the Hebrew Bible; it is the seeds, so to speak, of the themes and variations that come after it, and I am starting to see how the New Testament picks up on those themes, frequently reading them in a new light. Similarly, the Bible’s influence, which can hardly be overstated, means that Genesis is something of a repository of subsequent literary themes. It is one of the primary sources of all Western literature, and so the imagery and patterns presented in Genesis are in many cases the threads from which subsequent literary is woven. Having understood somewhat better how those patterns work will invariably influence my own reading of poetry and fiction.

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I am further struck by the degree to which a literary reading reveals the potential of Genesis as an ecological text. Ecological and eco-theological readings of the Bible are, of course, nothing new, but I was not prepared for just how central ecological themes are, nor for the extent to which Genesis suggests the interconnectedness of human action and ecological flourishing—or devastation, as is frequently the case. Our own time has certainly bore out the truth of the text on this score, even if our unprecedented technological capacities have allowed some of us to escape the most destructive consequences of the environmental crisis (for now). This should hardly come as a surprise, however, as human rapacity and injustice throughout history have frequently resulted in barren lands, social instability, and even civilizational collapse. For Genesis, such barrenness is the result of wickedness, and especially of failure to love our brother, to trust in God and see his face in the face of others.

Moreover, Genesis suggests a different kind of relationship to the natural world than the Bible is sometimes understood to contain. Unlike the planter piety of the antebellum South, for instance, which saw slavers as bequeathed by God with land and enslaved workers both so as to steward them into production, and even unlike Utah Mormons’ wasteful interpretation of Isaiah 35:1, I think Genesis points towards a relation to nature more like permaculture than large-scale farming, much less rampant exploitation. When God invites human beings to rule over creation, he is giving them an injunction to mimic his own creative relationship with the natural world, a relationship marked by the maximization of diverse life in every sphere. God makes the sea to flourish, the sky to resound with the singing of birds, the earth to spread with herbs and trees. This world is not made to be exploited by human beings, but as an integral whole with them, wherein each can flourish only when all do. We might see the fact that human beings come last in the creative process not just as indicating their uniqueness, but also the extent of their dependance. The rest of creation precedes humanity because without it there can be no humanity.

It is interesting that this point is sometimes missed by environmentalists and theologians, who will sometimes blame the imperative of Gen 1:28 to “subdue” and “have dominion over” the earth as responsible for exploitative human attitudes toward nature. While this is a valid indictment in relation to how those imperatives have sometimes been read, the context of Genesis, as well as its later content, suggests more ecological readings. The text’s insistence that all the creation is “very good,” the nurturing example of “righteous” figures like Noah, God’s reluctance to allow human beings to eat meat, and so on, make the idea that Genesis is advocating an exploitative relationship with nature hard to maintain. Moreover, given that being made in God’s image is most often taken to indicate that human beings are God’s representatives or “viceroys,” it’s hard to see how a God of wildly creative fertility would expect his representatives to act in a way that violates the diverse life of his creation. As the scholar Emmanuel O. Nwoaru has argued, “the imperatives kibsû [subdue] and redû [rule over] and their cognates may suggest the use of violence and force. But there is no justifiable reason to allow that to override the proper sense of the words in their immediate context. Human beings are to be personally answerable for the wellbeing and prosperity of those (creatures) placed under their charge.”¹

Ecological thinking, permaculture, an inclusive conservationism, veganism—these better represent this form of relationship than feed lots or monocropping. Even traditional plough farming looks problematic from this angle. I am speaking of ideals here, of course, and we all live under the necessity of eating, but anyone who professes a respect for the Bible ought to seriously consider the images of cosmic flourishing that it presents, and not just in Genesis, for such images repeat throughout later texts as well.

1. Emmanuel O. Nwaoru, “Genesis 1,29 and the Divine Imperatives for Sustainable Ecology,” Biblische Notizen (2012), https://research.ebsco.com/c/xoie2c/search/details/vllgpthdjr?db=lsdah&isDashboardExpanded=true&limiters=None&q=ecology%20genesis.