The Six Days of Creation as Six Visions

 By Archimandrite Joel Yiannakopoulos

A look at the biblical six-day period convinces us that it is not about long periods of time, as some have believed, because the phrase "and it was evening, and it was morning, first day" shows that it excludes this idea. Nor is it about twenty-four-hour days, because the sun was made on the fourth day. So it is about six visions, enclosed in twenty-four hour time intervals, through which (I am not saying how it happened, but that) Moses saw God's action in time.

The six visions are divided into two corresponding triads of days, so that the first triad verses 3-13 has the divisions, and the second triad verses 14-25 the supplements. Specifically: The first triad: On the first day light is separated from darkness, on the second day the sky is separated from the sea, on the third day the sea is separated from the land. In the second triad we have the following supplements: On the fourth day we have the sun to complement the light of the first day. On the fifth day we have the complements of sky and sea, i.e. birds and fish. And on the sixth day we have land animals and man, as supplements to the land and plants of the third day, because on the land and through the plants both animals and men live.

Source: From Η ΠΑΛΑΙΑ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ, Τ. Α΄, Η ΓΕΝΕΣΙΣ, εκδ. ΒΑΣ. ΡΗΓΟΠΟΥΛΟΥ, ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗ 1969, σελ. 46. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.

 

 

The Purpose of the Creation Account in Genesis According to Cyril of Alexandria

By St. Cyril of Alexandria

The divine Moses does not appear before our eyes as one who composed doubtful stories, nor one who launched himself out on this road from simple ambition. He had in mind primarily to contribute to making lives led better. And in fact he did not attempt to discourse subtly on the nature of the things, by speaking about what the first principles are named, or about the elements which proceed from it; these things are, in my opinion, too obscure, and inaccessible to some minds. His goal was to form the spirits of his contemporaries with the doctrines of the truth: because they were being misled and had taken to worshiping each according to his imagination. Their extreme ignorance made them ignore the one God, God by nature, and to worship his creations. Some thought that the sky was god, others the disc of the sun; there were even some wretched enough to allot the glory of the supreme nature to the moon, the stars, the earth, to plants, to the watery element, birds, or to brute animals! They had come to this, and such a terrible sickness had affected all the inhabitants of the earth, when Moses came to their help and revealed himself as the initiator into knowledge of great value for all. He proclaimed clearly that there exists by nature only one Creator of the universe, and radically distinguished Him from all other realities which He had merely brought into being and existence. Considering what was useful, and as clearly as possible, neglecting every excessively subtle point, he restricted himself to deal only with that which was strictly essential.

St. John Chrysostom on the Vital Power of Primordial Water

By St. John Chrysostom

(Homilies on Genesis 3.4)

What is meant by that part of the text, "The Spirit of God moved over the water"? It seems to me to mean this, that some life-giving force was present in the waters: it wasn't simply water that was stationary and immobile, but moving and possessed of some vital power. I mean, what doesn't move is quite useless, whereas what moves is capable of many things. So, to teach us that this water, great and cumbersome as it was, had some vital power, he says, "The Spirit of God moved over the water." It is not without reason that Sacred Scripture makes this early comment. Instead, it intends later to describe to us that creatures were produced in these waters by the command of the Creator of all things, and so at this point it teaches the listener that water was not idly formed, but was moving, and shifting, and flowing over everything.

"And God Saw That It Was Good" (St. Basil the Great)

By St. Basil the Great

Hexaemeron (Homily 3, 10)

"And God saw that it was good" (Gen. 1:13).

God does not judge of the beauty of His work by the charm of the eyes, and He does not form the same idea of beauty that we do. What He esteems beautiful is that which presents in its perfection all the fitness of art, and that which tends to the usefulness of its end. He, then, who proposed to Himself a manifest design in His works, approved each one of them, as fulfilling its end in accordance with His creative purpose. A hand, an eye, or any portion of a statue lying apart from the rest, would look beautiful to no one. But if each be restored to its own place, the beauty of proportion, until now almost unperceived, would strike even the most uncultivated. But the artist, before uniting the parts of his work, distinguishes and recognizes the beauty of each of them, thinking of the object that he has in view. It is thus that Scripture depicts to us the Supreme Artist, praising each one of His works; soon, when His work is complete, He will accord well deserved praise to the whole together.

Homilies on Genesis 1 by St. Nikolai Velimirovich (7 of 7)

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

(Prologue, Dec. 7)

"And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).

Brethren, when all the parts of a building are good, then the building in its entirety is very good. Every single brick is good, and every stone, the mortar and the lime, and the beams and the pillars - but man is moved to admiration only when he views the entire structure. Oftentimes, a certain detail in the building seems unintelligible and inappropriate to him, but he forgets about this in a moment when he turns his gaze upon the whole. And, indeed, there are many details in this world, as well as in things and in events, that are unintelligible and inappropriate to us. Only when the entire thing as a whole is revealed to us do we understand and are reassured.

Homilies on Genesis 1 by St. Nikolai Velimirovich (6 of 7)

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

(Prologue, Dec. 6)

"And God saw that it was good" (Gen. 1).

Brethren, everything that was created and how it was created by the most pure and sinless God is pure and sinless. Every creature of God is pure and sinless as long as it is turned toward God, as long as it is not separated from God and until it does not become hostile to God. Every creature of itself praises and glorifies God as long as it is pure and sinless. That is why the Psalmist sings: "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord [Alleluia]!" (Psalm 150:6).

Homilies on Genesis 1 by St. Nikolai Velimirovich (5 of 7)

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

(Prologue, Dec. 5)

"And God saw that it was good" (Genesis 1).

Brethren, the first revelation about this world that Holy Scripture communicates to us is that the world proceeded from good and not from evil, from God and not from some power contrary to God and not from some imagined primordial mixture of good and evil. The second revelation, brethren, about this world is that everything that the good God created is good. The light is good; the firmament of heaven is good; the land is good; the sea is good; the grass, the vegetation and the fruitful trees are good; the heavenly lights - the sun, moon and stars - are good; the living creatures in the water and the birds in the air are good; all living beings according to their kind are good; the cattle, the small animals and the beasts of the earth are good. Finally, man - the master, under the lordship of God, over all created things - is also good.

Homilies on Genesis 1 by St. Nikolai Velimirovich (4 of 7)

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

(Prologue, Dec. 4)

"And God saw that it was good" (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25).

Brethren, only good works proceed from the good Creator. Therefore, let all those who say that both good and evil proceed from God be silent. After His every act, God Himself affirms that it is good. Six times He repeated that what He created was good, and finally, the seventh time, when He saw all in its entirety, He pronounced His judgment that all He had created was "very good" (Gen. 1:31). Therefore, in total He repeated seven times that everything was good that came into existence by His holy will.

Homilies on Genesis 1 by St. Nikolai Velimirovich (3 of 7)

St. Nikolai Velimirovich

(Prologue, Dec. 3)

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen. 1:1).

Brethren, whatever God desires to reveal to men is revealed, and whatever He does not desire to reveal remains concealed. Moses, the one who beheld God, could say nothing more about heaven than that in the beginning God created it. Having said that, he continued to describe in detail the creation of the earth. Why does Moses not speak in detail about the creation of heaven? Because God did not want to reveal any more to him, since the men of his time were neither mature enough nor capable of understanding heavenly matters beyond their senses. Only when many centuries had passed and God's New Testament had come to men, did God reveal much more of the heavenly world to His faithful and chosen ones. Only Christians began to see the heavens opened.

Homilies on Genesis 1 by St. Nikolai Velimirovich (2 of 7)

Part One

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

(Prologue, Dec. 2)

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).

How compact and full is God's every word! It is like folded linen, which can be carried under the arm and spread upon the grass over a large area. How many, many priceless good things does this word of God reveal to us: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." First of all, it shows us that God is the only eternal and uncreated One. And this first revelation brings about in us the first inexpressible joy.

Homilies on Genesis 1 by St. Nikolai Velimirovich (1 of 7)

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

(Prologue, Dec. 1)

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).

Brethren, this is God's answer through the mouth of the prophet, the answer to the question that we all thirst to know: "Whence comes this world?" God hears our question, spoken or unspoken; He hears and gives an answer. Just as He gives rain to the dry earth, just as He gives health to a sick person, just as He gives bread and clothing to the body, so also does He give an answer to our spirit. He gives an answer to the question that has caused it hunger and thirst, pain and nakedness, until it (the spirit) is nourished and quenched, restored to health, and is clothed with the true answer.

Commentary on the Six Days of Creation and the Six Ages (St. Bede)

Concerning the Six Ages of the World

By Saint Bede

Hitherto it may have sufficed to speak literally of the origins of the growing world. It is pleasing, however, to intimate in a few words that order of those six or seven days in which the world was made correspond to its ages - which are of the same number.

All That a Christian Should at Least Know About Creation

By St. Augustine of Hippo

When, then, the question is asked what we are to believe in regard to religion, it is not necessary to probe into the nature of things, as was done by those whom the Greeks call physici;* nor need we be in alarm lest the Christian should be ignorant of the force and number of the elements — the motion, and order, and eclipses of the heavenly bodies; the form of the heavens; the species and the natures of animals, plants, stones, fountains, rivers, mountains; about chronology and distances; the signs of coming storms; and a thousand other things which those philosophers either have found out, or think they have found out. For even these men themselves, endowed though they are with so much genius, burning with zeal, abounding in leisure, tracking some things by the aid of human conjecture, searching into others with the aids of history and experience, have not found out all things; and even their boasted discoveries are oftener mere guesses than certain knowledge.

The Original Light of Creation (St. Gregory the Theologian)

By St. Gregory the Theologian

There is one Light, God: inaccessible, knowing no succession or beginning, never ceasing, never measured, always shining - triply shining! - yet few, I think or less than few, are capable of reflecting on how great it is. And there are secondary lights, shining forth from that first Light: the powers that surround it, the spirits that serve it. But this light around us not only began recently, but is interrupted by night, and itself interrupts night in equal measure; it is entrusted to our sight, it is poured out in the air, it takes the very thing it gives - for it provides sight for the power of seeing, and is the first thing that our eyes see; by bathing visible objects, it gives us access to them. For since God has willed this universe, composed of both visible and invisible beings, be put together as the great and marvelous herald of his greatness, he himself is the light for eternal creatures, and there is no other (for why would those who possessed the greatest of lights need a second one?); but for lower creatures - those all around us - he caused the power of this light to shine forth, first of all. For it was fitting that the Great Light begin the work of creation with light, by which he destroyed the darkness, along with the disorder and confusion that had prevailed until then.

That God is the Cause of All Creation (St. Gregory Palamas)

By St. Gregory Palamas

That the world has an origin nature teaches and history confirms, while the discoveries of the arts, the institution of laws and the constitution of states also clearly affirm it. We know who are the founders of nearly all the arts, the lawgivers and those who established states, and indeed we know what has been written about the origin of everything. Yet we see that none of this surpasses the account of the genesis of the world and of time as narrated by Moses. And Moses, who wrote about the genesis of the world, has so irrefutably substantiated the truth of what he writes through such extraordinary actions and words that he has convinced virtually the whole human race and has persuaded them to deride those who sophistically teach the contrary. Since the nature of this world is such that everything in it requires a specific cause in each instance, and since without such a cause nothing can exist at all, the very nature of things demonstrates that there must be a first principle which is self-existent and does not derive from any other principle.

Why Was the Book of Genesis Written?

The Prophet (Moses) wrote the Book of Genesis as an introduction to the divine knowledge, the intention of Moses being to lead by the hand those enslaved by the senses - through the visible things - to the perception of the things that transcend the senses.

- St. Gregory of Nyssa (Apology of the Hexaemeron 8)

Why St. Neophytos the Recluse Wrote His "Hexaemeron" ("Six-Days of Creation")

In his introduction to his Interpretation of the Hexaemeron, St. Neophytos the Recluse (+ 1215) explains the following reason as to why he undertook this work:

It seems good to tell as to what caused me to reach the decision to write this book. When I was enlightened by some divine sunrise from above and I turned far away from the vanities of life, and my feet were led along the straight path and way of peace, so as to follow the monastic life, I secretly left my parents and my seven siblings, both male and female, and I arrived at a certain holy monastery. There it happened that I heard the prophetic words which say: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," and all the words which follow these. And as I listened I was amazed because I had never heard these words before, for I was illiterate and did not even know the alphabet, being a child of eighteen years of age.

St. Basil the Great on the Intelligent Cause of Creation

By St. Basil the Great

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Genesis 1:1

I stop struck with admiration at this thought. What shall I first say? Where shall I begin my story? Shall I show forth the vanity of the Gentiles? Shall I exalt the truth of our faith?

The philosophers of Greece have made much ado to explain nature, and not one of their systems has remained firm and unshaken, each being overturned by its successor. It is vain to refute them; they are sufficient in themselves to destroy one another. Those who were too ignorant to rise to a knowledge of a God, could not allow that an intelligent cause presided at the birth of the Universe; a primary error that involved them in sad consequences. Some had recourse to material principles and attributed the origin of the Universe to the elements of the world. Others imagined that atoms, and indivisible bodies, molecules and ducts, form, by their union, the nature of the visible world. Atoms reuniting or separating, produce births and deaths and the most durable bodies only owe their consistency to the strength of their mutual adhesion: a true spider's web woven by these writers who give to heaven, to earth, and to sea so weak an origin and so little consistency! It is because they knew not how to say "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". Deceived by their inherent atheism it appeared to them that nothing governed or ruled the universe, and that all was given up to chance.

The Lost World of Adam and Eve: An Interview with John Walton

The following interview provides some helpful hints in how to read Genesis 1 and 2 within the broader context of the language and culture in which it was written, which will also help bring us to a deeper theological understanding of the text.

Old Testament scholar John Walton affirms a historical Adam—but says there are far more important dimensions to Genesis.

Interview by Kevin P. Emmert

MARCH 19, 2015

Christianity Today

Basil the Great on the Vanity of Reading Genesis as Science

In the passage below from Basil the Great's Hexaemeron (Homily 9), we see that Genesis avoids presenting vain scientific theories in order to focus on that which edifies and perfects the soul. To read Genesis either as a literal historical scientific account, or even infusing allegory into the text, is a vain attempt at reading this text outside of the divine intention behind its inspiration. In fact, the entire Bible is a theological book that primarily aims at the perfecting of our souls.