Tag: Gmirkin: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image [LXX εικόνα], according to our likeness [LXX όμοίωσιν]; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image [LXX εικόνα], in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26-27)

RG focuses on two interesting details here.

1. Whereas plants, sea creatures, land animals are made “after their own kind”, mankind is made in the likeness of the gods — made in the genus of God.

In Gen 1:26 the Septuagint renders … “in our image according to our likeness” with …. “according to our image and according to [our] likeness”,. . . using the double κατά (“according to”) . . . . The κατά phrases . . . echo the phrase κατά γένος (“according to [its] kind”) of the preceding verses, suggesting more strongly than in the Hebrew that humankind belongs to the γένος [=race, genus] of God, or, at least, highlighting the contrast with the animals more strongly than in the Hebrew. (Loader, 27f)

2. In creating mankind we read God for the first time saying “Let us…”, that is, “Let us make man in our image.”

The language employed here, which points to some form of gathering of the gods, who state their intention to create humans in their image, implicitly recognizes older, polytheistic traditions. The announcement of their collective decision to make humankind suggests the divine council as narrative context (Westermann 1984: 144). Creation in the divine image is distantly reminiscent of Mesopotamian regnal imagery, where the king was created in a god’s image . . . , but here it was all of humanity that was created in the image of the gods. It is likely that both male and female gods were here envisioned, since humans were created “in the image of the Elohim… male and female” (Gen 1:27). (Gmirkin, 136)

“Let US . . .“

Various attempts have been made to explain God saying: “Let us….”. Westermann (cited by RG) believes the most economical explanation is that “Let us” implies a council of gods involved in the decision to create humans. Compelled to find out what was behind that interpretation I turned to Westermann who cited Schmidt and Schmidt, it turned out, said everything Westermann said except in German. (The price one sometimes pays just to be sure!) — Here is a synopsis of Schmidt’s (Westermann’s) argument:

Is it the Trinity speaking?

An early church view was that God was speaking as the Trinity. There is nothing else in Genesis to suggest the Trinity so we can put that view aside.

Is it a plural of majesty?

Another is that we have a “plural of majesty” … as in the monarch saying “we” where lesser mortals would simply say “I”. Exegetes who have worked on the view that Genesis was written very early have discounted that possibility because a clear instance of a “plural of majesty” only appears elsewhere for the first time in the mouth of the Persian king in the Book of Esther. (RG, though, does argue for a post-Persian era composition of Genesis.)

Is it a council of gods?

Note that God is found speaking of “us” in other books of the Old Testament whenever he is in a council with other divine beings. [See the insert below for references.] But again, many scholars have been reluctant to accept the view that God is addressing a council of gods in Genesis because they are convinced that the (“priestly”) author would never have thought to imagine God as a “first among equals”.

Is God talking to himself?

Another view: are we reading here God turning over an idea in his mind, speaking to himself? The problem with that view is that there is nothing in the declaration to suggest a pondering: the words are a proclamation, an announcement, of what “they” are about to do.

After weighing up the above options, Schmidt concludes that the sentence here is a relic from a polytheistic era. Both Schmidt and Westermann conclude that the saying originated in the context of a heavenly court of divine beings but continued as a form of speech even after the idea of a heavenly court was no longer part of their belief system. No doubt many later readers and copyists did treat it as a form of speech and ignored its original and literal meaning. But that leaves open the question of why the first author chose to use the expression. For RG, we have here one more instance of a borrowing from Plato:

In light of Plato’s Timaeus, the appearance of a multiplicity of gods becomes entirely comprehensible. (Gmirkin, 136)

In Timaeus the Demiurge or Craftsman God first created the universe and then in a subsequent stage delegated the creation of humanity to the other gods he had also created. That Creator God addressed these lesser deities to explain why he wanted them to be the ones to create humankind:

Once all the gods had been created — both those that traverse the heavens for all to see and those that make themselves visible when they choose — the creator of this universe of ours addressed them as follows: ‘Gods, divine works of which I am the craftsman and father, anything created by me is imperishable unless I will it. Any bond can be unbound, but to want to destroy a structure of beauty and goodness is a mark of evil. Hence, although as created beings you are not altogether immortal and indestructible, still you shall not perish nor shall death ever be your lot, since you have been granted the protection of my will, as a stronger and mightier bond than those with which you were bound at your creation. ‘Now mark my words and apprehend what I disclose to you. Three kinds of mortal creature remain yet uncreated, and while they remain so the universe will be incomplete, for it will not contain within itself all kinds of living creatures, as it must if it is to be perfect and complete. If I were to be directly responsible for their creation and their life, they would have the rank of gods. To ensure that they are mortal, and that this universe is truly whole, it is you who must, in fulfilment of your natures, imitate the power that I used in creating you and turn, as craftsmen, to the creation of living creatures. . . . .

After this, he handed over to the younger gods the task of forming their mortal bodies. When they had also created any further attributes a human soul might require, and whatever went along with such attributes, he left it up to them to govern and steer every mortal creature as best they could, so that each one would be as noble and good as it might be, apart from any self-caused evils. (41a – 42e; Waterfield translation)

Sarna in his commentary on Genesis supports the interpretation that “Let us” is a pointer to a heavenly court:

Let us make The extraordinary use of the first person plural evokes the image of a heavenly court in which God is surrounded by His angelic host.²⁰ Such a celestial scene is depicted in several biblical passages. This is the Israelite version of the polytheistic assemblies of the pantheon — monotheized and depaganized. It is noteworthy that this plural form of divine address is employed in Genesis on two other occasions, both involving the fate of humanity: in 3:22, in connection with the expulsion from Eden; and 11:17, in reference to the dispersal of the human race after the building of the Tower of Babel. (Sarna, 12)

The image of God

What does the expression — “image of God, after our likeness” — mean? The fact that these words are not explained in Genesis indicates that it was well enough understood not to need further explanation at the time it was written (Schmidt, 136). So we must look for parallel usages. If we turn to Mesopotamian creation stories, however, we search in vain:

Can a precursor of the tradition be found in the ancient Orient? Although the similarity between God and man is repeatedly stated there in that man is said to be created from clay and the blood of the gods or even in the divine image, the expression “image of God” hardly has its home in the (Babylonian) creation myths. (Schmidt, 136f – translation. Cited by Clines who is cited by Gmirkin, 136)

What happens when we look in another direction? Continue reading “When God Created Humans, then Retired: Genesis 1 as Science — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 5c]”

The ideas set out in the preceding chapters of Russell Gmirkin’s Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts begin to find their “real-life” application in chapter 5. This chapter, “Genesis 1 as Science”, is a verse-by-verse commentary drawing on the preceding discussions.

Genesis 1:1 comes with three and a half pages of analysis.

When God began to create the heavens and the earth (1:1 MT; New Revised Standard Version)

Not Creation Ex Nihilo

This opening verse is sometimes thought to describe God creating the universe from nothing, ex nihilo. But the idea that God created everything from nothing is not found in the Bible. Gmirkin cites Gerhard May as pointing out that the explicit notion of an ex nihilo creation first appeared as late as the Christian Church Fathers in the late second century.

RG justifies his claim that Gen 1:1 does not speak of God actually creating “the heavens and the earth” on the grounds that:

• it is only in later verses in Genesis 1 that we read of the actual creation of heavens and then the earth
• Genesis 1 uses formulas (eg “And God said, ‘Let there be…'”) to describe God’s creative acts and no such formula is found in 1:1
• and in the conclusion of this section we read “and thus the heavens and earth were finished”, indicating that the creation took place over six days out of pre-existing primordial chaotic matter.

In other words, Genesis 1:1 is a heading and the actual creative acts follow.

The idea that the universe emerged out of chaotic matter conforms to Greek scientific views that held that the universe in some form (even as chaotic matter) had to have always existed.

Is 1:1 a title of what follows, then? Every other block of narrative in Genesis has a title or “superscript”. But no, it is not a title, RG concludes. Rather, RG goes one step further and argues that the opening verse is a very condensed counterpart to Plato’s prologue to his account of creation in Timaeus. The prologue of the creation account in Plato’s Timaeus contains the following details:

• that the ordered visible world had a clear beginning point (it existed in a realm of “becoming”)
• that the cause of this beginning of an ordered cosmos was God (the word translated “began” or “beginning” in the LXX, ἀρχῇ [arche], means both “beginning” and “cause” and is used frequently in Timaeus)
• that God was a being who existed apart from or outside the universe
• God is presented as an artisan, a craftsman (or Demiurge), a personality with a purpose.

All those details are elaborated upon in a scientific discussion in Timaeus 27d to 29d.

Excerpts from Plato’s prologue:

. . . . . Now everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created.

. . . . was the world, I say, always in existence and without beginning? or created, and had it a beginning? Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and all sensible things are apprehended by opinion and sense and are in a process of creation and created. Now that which is created must, as we affirm, of necessity be created by a cause. But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out; and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible. . . . .

. . . . If then, Socrates, amid the many opinions about the gods and the generation of the universe, we are not able to give notions which are altogether and in every respect exact and consistent with one another, do not be surprised. Enough, if we adduce probabilities as likely as any others; for we must remember that I who am the speaker, and you who are the judges, are only mortal men, and we ought to accept the tale which is probable and enquire no further. (Benjamin Jowett translation)

From Chaos to Cosmos: Plato and Zeno

1:2 MT – The earth was waste and empty (tohu wabohu) and darkness covered the face of the deep (tehom) and a divine wind (ruach) swept over the face of the waters (mayim). 

1:2 LXX – But the earth (γῆ) was invisible and unformed (ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος); and darkness was upon the abyss (ἀβύσσου). And God’s spirit (πνεῦμα Θεοῦ) bore upon the waters (ὕδατος).

What we read here is not total and utter chaos, but a beginning with raw material differentiated into earth, deep waters, and air. That’s not from Plato but it is from another early philosopher, one who founded the Stoic school, Zeno. (Zeno was a contemporary of those whom RG is submitting as the authors of Genesis.) Darkness implies that there is light somewhere but not directed towards the materials from which the cosmos was to be created. Interestingly, Plato understood darkness to be a material element — a form of dense air that lacked minute sparks of fire.

For Plato, the chaos at the beginning did not differentiate the elements of fire, earth, air and water. Zeno, on the other hand, proposed that fire was the basic element and from fire arose air, and from air was formed watery stuff, and from water a sediment of earth fell and coalesced into earth. From that condensed gooey muddy mass air arose, and from the air emerged aether, and when air moved as wind it threw clouds together so causing lightning — and hence light itself — to emerge.

Plato did attribute the start of creation to a good and intelligent creator god. He also said that (as per the LXX above) the primordial chaos was invisible. He had some concept of darkness as a substance that could rest on matter.

For Zeno, the four elements could be discerned in some sort of stratification in the chaos at the start. And since movement was a divine attribute, air in motion, or wind, was a divine element from which eventually came light.

Where does God enter Zeno’s picture? For Zeno, there were two types of active (divine) elements: fire and air. Fire, in turn, was subdivided into physical fire — a fire that consumed its fuel — and a spirit or god-fire that did not consume matter. (Compare Moses seeing the burning bush where God is said to be a fire that does not consume the bush.) For Zeno, only corporeal elements could move corporeal elements. The spirit fire, god, was thus the prime mover that initiated the orderly arrangement of the universe out of the chaos and even inhabited everything. Plato, on the other hand, thought of God as a transcendent, non-corporeal but anthropomorphic figure who spoke to bring about the cosmos — although other biblical authors did give God a fiery body.

So at the expense of some contradiction with what follows (e.g. the earth and water being separated on a subsequent day of creation) the author of Genesis 1:2 appears to have followed ideas from both Plato and Zeno.

RG breaks up his discussion into a series of categories (viz. an overview of Plato’s ideas; the cosmogony in Genesis compared with that of Greek philosophers; the stratification of the elements; the divine wind; ontology and a discussion of Greek and Hebrew terms) which, though thorough, means certain ideas are discussed repeatedly under each heading. The point of such detail and repetition is to prepare the reader for the final overview comparison of Genesis 1:2 and Greek cosmogonies.

Gmirkin, Russell E. Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. Abingdon, Oxon New York, NY: Routledge, 2022.

(Unfortunately for the progress of this series on RG’s new book, I was lately sidetracked into reading related to further exploration of the evidence we have for events affecting Jews and Christians between the events of 70 and 135 BCE. This was in part inspired by follow-up reading to Witulski’s view of Revelation being a product of the Hadrianic era, and led to further investigations into the background conditions that appeared to form the matrix from which both Christianity and rabbinic Judaism emerged. I look forward to posting more about thoughts arising in the future.)

Here is the thesis that Russell Gmirkin [RG] is buttressing in Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts:

The thesis has been the subject of earlier books that have been discussed in detail on this blog. In support of that interpretation RG analyses the Genesis creation chapter to demonstrate its relationship to Greek “philosophical” ideas and in particular, Plato’s Timaeus.

Anyone familiar with Timaeus will be immediately thinking, But Timaeus contains a very lengthy explanation of the origins of our cosmos and Genesis 1 is, well, extremely short. Yes, but Plato also said something else that is most pertinent to this discussion that is alluded to in the above quotation.  Hear out RG. I will do my best to present his analysis and comparisons fairly and accurately.

The ancient Greek science context of Genesis

Ancient Greek science was a process of inferring how and why the observable world came about and worked the way it did but the idea of carrying out experiments to test ideas had to wait for a future time.

We have clear demarcations between the study of the origins of the universe and the study of the origins of societies. Not so ancient Greek thinkers. For them, the “history of nature” bracketed all in one course the question of the origins of the universe, of life, of humankind, of social institutions, of technologies, of political systems.

The questions they asked were:

• What was the nature and origin of the “stuff” from which the cosmos came about?
• What were the forces (e.g. floating and sinking, separation of matter by winnowing), and the origins of those forces, that acted on that “stuff” to cause it to behave the way it did?
• How did those forces cause the cosmos to come into existence?

The thinkers were not called “scientists”. Aristotle called them “students of nature” or “writers on nature” (see the Loeb edition of Aristotle’s Physics). Later authors called them “philosophers” and that’s the common label attached to them today. RG addresses the problematic state of the evidence for our knowledge of what these natural philosophers theorized but we do have some general ideas, however provisional, and he provides an interesting set of entries for them to enable us to get some idea of the intellectual context RG is arguing for Genesis 1. (The links are my own, of course, and not RG’s) Continue reading “Genesis = Science + Myth + Theology — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 3a]”