Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Lecture 2

If you want to know what the water tastes like, don’t ask the fish!

Chinese saying

Recapitulating Lecture 1: Why Study the Bible?

1. Ideas have consequences.2. The Bible provides a series of seminal liberating & counter-cultural ideas.3. These are intrinsic to Western civilisation & free thinking.

Recapitulating Lecture 1: Why Study the Bible?

19 Thesis on the Bible: Walter Brueggemann

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

1. Everybody has a script• Stated or unstated. • Individuals and

Communities. • The process of scuttling

the old script in favour of a new script is called ‘conversion’.

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

3. The dominant script of self and community , for both liberals and conservatives, is the script of therapy, technology, consumerism, materialism and militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life.

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Therapy & Technology

• The assumption that there is a product or a treatment or a process to counteract every problem so life may be lived without inconvenience.

• The assumption that everything can be fixed and made right through human ingenuity.

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

4. This script− enacted through advertising, propaganda & ideology, especially in the several liturgies of television− promises to make us safe and happy. It invites us to live in a bubble that is absent of critical reflection!

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Think about it!

Is this our national script?

Debunking the script of today’s Western concept of female beauty!

5. That script has failed.

• We are not safe. We are not happy.

• The script is guaranteed to produce new depths of insecurity and new waves of unhappiness.

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

9. The alternative script is rooted in the WORD (written and en-fleshed) and enacted in liturgy.

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

11-13. This alternative script is not monolithic or one-dimensional but ragged, disputatious, disjunctive & cannot be smoothed out. We should not pretend we have an easy case to make reading or proclaiming this script. Lecture 2:

Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

17. The good news is that our ambivalence as we stand between scripts is precisely the primal venue for the work of God’s Spirit. Lecture 2:

Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

• Militarism-Brueggemann.• Violence saves, violence

works, violence is inevitable, war brings peace, might makes right.

• The dominant religion!

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

The Liturgy of TV Cartoons

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

The Gospel of the Gun…

Peace flows through the barrel of a gun! Lecture 2:

Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

The ‘Liturgical’ Counterscript of Gen 1

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Hieronymus Bosch, The Creation. c. 1504-1510.

• How did the Creation story (Gen 1) function as counterscript for its contemporary ‘readers’?

• How does the Creation story (Gen 1) function as counterscript for us today?

Creation as Redemptive Violence

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

The biblical story of creation in Genesis 1, de-scripts and de-legitimizes these creation myths of violence and offers a radical counter-script to it… Lecture 2:

Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

 * ‘Thou didst crush the heads of Leviathan; thou didst give him as food for the creatures of the wilderness (Psalm 74:14). * ‘Thou didst crush Rahab like a carcass; thou didst scatter thy enemies with thy mighty arm’ (Psalm 89:10).

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

 * ‘In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea’ (Isaiah 27:1). * ‘Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not thou that didst cut Rahab in pieces, that didst pierce the dragon?’ (Isaiah 51:9)   

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

* ‘And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore. Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns were ten diadems, and on his heads were blasphemous names’ (Rev 13:1). * ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more’ (Rev 21:1).

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Problem (1:2)

Preparation (Days 1—3)

Population (Days 4—6)

Darkness 1A: Creation of light—Day -----------------------------------1B: Separation from Darkness—Night

4A: Creation of Sun-----------------------------------4B: Creation of Moon & Stars

Watery Abyss 2A: Creation of Firmament-----------------------------------2B: Separation of waters above from waters below

5A: Creation of Birds-----------------------------------5B: Creation of Fish

Formless Earth

3A: Separation of Earth from Sea-----------------------------------3B: Creation of Vegetation

6A: Creation of Land Animals-----------------------------------6B: Creation of Humans

The Dignity of Labour

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

‘And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had doneAnd he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had doneSo God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it because on it God rested’ ... (Gen 2:2-3) Lecture 2:

Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Exodus 20:10-11 ‘the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God…for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth…and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it’. Lecture 2:

Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Deuteronomy 5:14-15 ‘the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work…. You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day’. Lecture 2:

Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Sabbath:

1) Creation

2) Salvation

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

1) A statement about ownership of land and by extension ownership of Israel and by further extension ownership of the whole world. 2) A conscious repudiation of other gods. 3) A sign of God’s covenant with Israel. Lecture 2:

Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

9. The alternative script is rooted in the WORD (written and en-fleshed) and enacted in liturgy.

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Conclusion

Lecture 2: Creation as Counterscript in Genesis 1

Hieronymus Bosch, The Creation. c. 1504-1510.

• How did the Creation story (Gen 1) function as counterscript for its contemporary ‘readers’?

• How does the Creation story (Gen 1) function as counterscript for us today?