Genesis 1: A Corrective to a Violent Deity

In his essay ‘Created in the Image of a Violent God?: The Ethical Problem of the Conquest of Chaos in Biblical Creation Texts’, J. Richard Middleton writes,

In addressing this question, readers of Scripture as canon ought to face squarely not only the presence of cosmogonic conflict in those texts where it genuinely occurs, but also the overwhelming violence that pervades the Bible—from the holy wars of Israel against the Canaanites (at God's command), through the plethora of violent incidents attributed either to God or to God's people in the historical books. Moreover the widespread patriarchal social structure that underlies the biblical text certainly constitutes a form of systemic violence against women. 

Nevertheless, while admitting the presence of much that is ethically problematic in the pages of Scripture (including cosmogonic conflict), I propose that we take seriously the canonical placement of Gen 1 as the prologue or preface to the biblical canon. Even Levenson, despite his tendency to claim that the Chaoskampf is the standard biblical way of depicting God's sovereignty, is constrained to admit that the Gen 1 creation account (which does not contain cosmogonic conflict) "now serves as the overture to the entire Bible, dramatically relativizing the other cosmogonies." 

But the creation account of Gen 1 does not just relativize the creation-by-combat motif. Rather, by its alternative depiction of God's non-violent creative power at the start of the biblical canon, Gen 1 signals the Creator's original intent for shalom and blessing at the outset of human history, prior to the rise of human (or divine) violence. As the opening canonical disclosure of God for readers of Scripture, Gen 1 constitutes a normative framework by which we may judge all the violence that pervades the rest of the Bible. 

If the portrayal of God's exercise of non-violent creative power in Gen 1 is taken in conjunction with its claim that humanity is made in the image of this God, this has significant implications for contemporary ethics. This opening canonical disclosure of God and humanity constitutes, not only a normative framework for interpreting the rest of Scripture, but also a paradigm or model for exercising of human power in the midst of a world filled with violence. 

The text of Genesis 1 is a rather late edition to the Hebrew corpus. Thus, a good deal of time had elapsed in Hebrew/Jewish history. The author was able to reflect on the theological ramifications of his people’s historical experiences. The influence and borrowing from surrounding Canaanite and other cultural religious myths is evident in many passages of the Hebrew texts, while at the same time the author of Genesis 1 came to recognize a profound contrast between the nature of the Hebrew God from the various deities depicted in pagan stories of origins. The foundational structures of the cosmos in these various myths were constructed on the bedrock of violence, as exampled in the Enuma Elish, in which the universe is formed from the violently mutilated corps of Tiamat by the agonistic Marduk.

So, why the God of combat in many other sections of the Hebrew Bible? This, I believe is an example of how the authors of the various texts of the scriptures candidly narrated the cultural mindset held by themselves and ancient Hebrews who were trapped in the cycle of the violent sacred. While Girard notes passages in which the revelation of the non-violent God shone through, a good deal of the Hebrew scriptures reflects the cultural propagation of the scapegoat mechanism, in which the god of wrath was the author and the legitimization for acts of militaristic violence against ethnic others. Genesis 1, as Middleton's insights make clear, is a light that shines a hermeneutical illumination on the true nature of the divine, as non-violent, which in turns helps us to better exegete those passages that are problematic due to their violent suggestions of a wrath filled deity.