“These are the genealogies of the heavens and the earth; when they were caused to be; on the day that the gods (‘loyim) made the earth and the heavens.”
What did the Hebrew writer mean by “the genealogies of the heavens and of the earth?”
A genealogy, according to Oduyoye in his AfroAsiatic Interpretation of Genesis, is a list showing the lineage of a person or people beginning with the first parents. In the Hebrew lineages of Genesis, only the first male parent is mentioned, as if offspring are generated asexually in patriarchal societies. In the “book” of the lineage of Adam, for instance, the vital role of the female Eve in the reproductive scheme is ignored.
The special bias of the Hebrew writer for male parents explains why an account which claims to be a lineage of the male heavens (has-samay-im; with a masculine suffix) and the female earth (ha-‘adam-ah; with a feminine suffix) settles quickly into a description of the generative-creative acts of masculine sky gods (‘loyim) of the heavens, objectifying the female earth as passive material creatrix.
The unique achievement of the writer of the Genesis account, in my view, is the grand unification of the horde of masculine sky deities in the generic identity of YHWH. The Hebrew sky god is thus referred to as the “gods YHWH” with an explicit understanding of unity of the Godhead.
The significance of the Old Testament term, Tsabaoth, is often missed in the cultural context of thought dominated by assumptions of monotheism. Buried, apparently, in the history of development of the ancient Hebrew cult of YHWH, was a notion of their god as a social entity, a corporate personality of some sort. While the organic cohesion of a band of soldiers, as opposed to a mob of men, might have made a deep impression on the persons who first coined the name “Y’Wa Tsabaoth,” the term does not refer exclusively to an organized military group, but to any body consisting of parts integrated into a functional system. A disciplined body of soldiers is a “Tsabaoth.” An organized group of workmen is a “Tsabaoth.” A constellation of stars is a “Tsabaoth.” The Milky Way galaxy is a “Tsabaoth” of star constellations. The animal system consisting of cells organized into tissues, tissues into organs, organs into systems, and systems into the organism, constitutes a hierarchical “Tsabaoth”.
According to Oduyoye, the expression YHWH ‘loyim may be understood to mean: YHWH, the divine (corporate) personality whom the heathens refer to as the gods. The term “YHWH Tsabaoth” which implies “legions” of gods in the synthetic unity of YHWH, buttresses the claim that the name YHWH ‘loyim (“gods”) could be taken as an acknowledgment of plurality of persons in the divine Godhead.
In the creation of Adam and Eve, the Hebrew scripture tells us that man was made in the image of God. The writer of the creation story gives us a hint of what he means by the selem (Image/form) of the gods (‘loyim) in Genesis 1:26-27/Genesis 2:24: “Let us make ‘adam according to the pattern of our morphological (selem) and dynamic-functional (demowt) traits…So the gods created ‘adam in his form (selem): male and female he created them… Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall become one flesh (even as the plurality of the gods is one in YHWH).”
The Genesis writer had intended to explain, with the words quoted above, that the selem of the earth-sky duality of the gods is illustrated in the duality of sexes; for which reason, the creation of the universe may be pictured as the heterosexual reproductive act of the sky gods and the earth goddesses. But this line of metaphor, Oduyoye recognizes, is one which the Hebrew writer unconsciously cringes from as being too close to the “perverse” sexual mythologies of Canaanite fertility religions, so he invests his culturally acquired bias for male parents in suppressing the active participation of the female earth in the genealogies of the sky and earth. That is why, in the Genesis account, we encounter the masculine sky God, in the act of self-reproduction, as a plastic artist working on an objectified creatrix; material red top soil of the earth (‘apar of ha-‘adam-ah) to design his selem (graven image form).
But so pervasive is sexual metaphor in traditional cosmogonies that the Hebrew writer unconsciously re-introduces its concepts. In spite of himself, he acknowledges in Genesis 1: 26-27 and Genesis 2:24 that the selem of the gods is not complete in ‘adam alone (“It is not good that the man should be alone, let us design a complement for him”). So he introduces the creation of Eve as an almost grudging afterthought of the gods; for, in the sexual duality of male and female is the heaven-earth duality of the gods fulfilled. Thus, while the culturally acquired bias of the writer explains the unnatural asexual loneliness of the Hebrew god in the work of creation, the implied presence of the female progenitrix complement (ha-‘adam-ah) is made explicit first in Genesis 1:26-27 and finally by the pronouncement of the “union formula” in Genesis 2:24.
The “male” role of the symbolic heavens (has-samay-im) in the creative act cannot be fulfilled without the participation of the complementing “female” role of the symbolic earth (ha-‘adam-ah); for which reason we may state that the functional attributes (demowt) of the sky gods in ha-‘adam are fulfilled in heterosexual relationship with Eve. Thus, the sexual duality of male and female becomes a metaphor for the earth-sky dimorphism of the gods (the Yoruba of West Africa express a more abstract categorization of their pantheon of gods into the “hot” and “cool” deities).
The demowt of the gods refers to the functional attributes of divinity which are chiefly generative-creative powers in the “hetero-sexual” liaison between the “male” (sky) and the “female” (earth) morphs of the gods. Thus, sexual reproduction becomes befitting metaphor for the act of creation of the heavens and the earth by the gods. Adam is the earthy, sodden graven image representation of the sky gods derived from the female element ha-‘adam-ah (the red top soil of the earth). But with in-breathing of the seminal life principle derived from the sky-atmosphere (ne-sama-ah chayy-iym: the Ancients made no strict distinction between the physical air and “spirit”), the otherwise inanimate selem becomes a nefes chaya (“living being”) exhibiting the dynamic demowt properties of life taken as being of exclusively divine origins.
The function of the gods and the goddesses in the creation of the universe may, therefore, be thought of as transcending the powers of mere plastic artistry, for it is a reproductive function at the core: The heterosexual coupling of Adam and Eve provides befitting metaphor with regard to the functions of the dual categories of the gods in creation; and Adam in particular (from the perspective of Hebrew patriarchism) is the incarnation of the sky gods in the material realm of the earth/chthonic goddesses. Thus, as Oduyoye points out, Adam is not just an ordinary man (enos); not, at least, a man born of woman (‘adam yelud issah), for he is the incarnation of the skyey creator in creation to the special end of bringing the lineage-evolution of the heavens and the earth to its culmination by the magical act of bringing things, including his wife, into being by naming them. “…And whatever ‘adam called the living thing was its name…” (Genesis 2:19).
Adam, in the context of the genesis account, is the semi-divine “son of God,” heir to the throne of the material universe. The unification of the gods in the generic identity of YHWH is the major accomplishment of the Genesis account, though, “theologization” of mythology, as Oduyoye suggests, might have been the chief intention of the Hebrew writer(s). This need not, however, be overemphasized, for the duality of mythology and theology exists mostly in the mind of the modern scholar and not in the minds of Ancients theorizing about the lineage of the symbolic female earth and symbolic male sky; for when in popular language the “heathen” says that the physical sun is the same as the god Shamash, what he really means to say is that the physical sun is the selem of an indwelling demowt imparting element. The popular “heathen” confusion of the phenomena of the physical heavens and earth with the gods is only apparent. The philosophers of the “heathens” would explain the confusion in a manner similar to the way the Genesis writer would: they will take care to distinguish the unseen from its visible manifestation. But they still will do this with a qualification: the power of the gods to bring the graven images of their divine selves to life lifts such images beyond the realm of mere lifeless shadows to partake, even if in a limited way, in the essential qualities of divinity.
The physical realm of the feminine earth (ha’adam-ah) is the realm of static “selemic” three-dimensional forms and appearances. The spiritual realm of the masculine heavens (ha-samay-iym) is the realm of animating, life-giving demowt essences.
“The body (selem) without the spirit (demowt) is dead.”
But animating “demowts” are abstractions which may only manifest their attributes by infusion into concrete “selems.” The crossroads, at which the animator (the spiritual) and the animated (the physical) meet, therefore, is the spark zone of realization of the potentials of both the physical and the spiritual. Life, therefore, is the phenomenon which springs from the hybridization of two elemental forms; the first, heavenly; the second, earthly.
The physical realm is the realm in which the animating (demowt) powers of the spiritual may be made manifest. The selem and demowt attributes of divinity may, therefore, be actualized only in the dynamic functions of physical phenomena. The ha-gibbor-iym are the hybrids derived from the “heterosexual” coupling of the heavens and the earth. Physicality, therefore, is an “evil” the spiritual must live with, for the spiritual may only actualize its potentials by subjecting to the constraints of self-expression in a limiting domain; and the patriarchal spirits have no choice, for there may be no free living spirits only living spirits domesticated in physical selem-bodies! Thus, we encounter an apparent inconsistency: that the selem and demowt attributes of divinity are fulfilled only in the physical realm implies that the gods of the myths are wholly ideal conceptions, with respect to which, the evolutionary dynamics of physical creation is the fulfilling quest.
The world of the traditional mind, therefore, is a world infested with free spirits seeking bodies to possess and of bodies seeking animating spirits to be possessed of. The noise of this world is the marketplace haggling of spirits and bodies for “heterosexual” relationship contracts.
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