And God said, Behold, I have given unto
you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the
earth, and every tree with seed-fruits: to you it shall be for
food: and to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the
air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there
is life, I have given the green herb for meat. Thus the heavens
and the earth were made and all the host of them, and on the
seventh day God ended His work, and blessed the seventh day, and
hallowed it." (Genesis i. 1-ii. 4a).
It is commonly said that the aim of this narrative is a purely
religious one. The Israelite certainly does not deny himself in
it: the religious spirit with which it is penetrated even comes
at some points into conflict with the nature of its materials.
The notion of chaos is that of uncreated matter; here we find
the remarkable idea that it is created in the beginning by God.
Brooded over by the Spirit, it is further of a nature for development
to take place out of it, and the trait that the creation is
represented throughout as a separation of elements which in chaos
were mixed together, betrays even now the original design: but
in the Hebrew narrative the immanent Spirit has yielded to the
transcendent God, and the principle of evolution is put aside in
favour of the fiat of creation.
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