Intimately connected with the advanced views of nature, which we
find in Genesis i., is the "purified" notion of God found there.
The most important point is that a special word is employed, which
stands for nothing else than the creative agency of God, and so
dissociates it from all analogy with human making and shaping--
a word of such exclusive significance that it cannot be reproduced
either in Latin, or in Greek, or in German. In a youthful people
such a theological abstraction is unheard of; and so with the
Hebrews we find both the word and the notion only coming into use
after the Babylonian exile; they appear along with the emphatic
statement of the creative omnipotence of Jehovah with reference to
nature, which makes its appearance, we may say suddenly, in the
literature of the exile, plays a great part in the Book of Job,
and frequently presents itself in Isaiah xl.-lxvi. In Genesis ii.
iii., not nature but man is the beginning of the world and of
history; whether a creation out of nothing is assumed there at
all, is a question which only the mutilation of the commencement
(before ii.
Pages:
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689