Creation in the Old Testament Prophetic Literature (original) (raw)

The prophets of the Old Testament wrote their inspired messages from God based on a clear understanding of His role as Creator. Martin G. Klingbeil "Creation," writes Rolf Rendtorff, "to this day has been one of the 'proverbial step-children' in the recent discipline of Old Testament theology." Brueggemann refers the responsibility for the peripheral position of creation in theology to the dichotomy between the Israelite faith and Canaanite religion, or history and myth, that found its way into biblical theology during the earlier part of the past century. A number of scholars did recognize the prominence of creation in the theological thinking of the Old Testament, both in terms of position and content. Some placed creation in history through its expression in myth and ritual. Thus it is the primeval event, and the stories told about and enacted upon it, are part of the universal traditions of humankind. The biblical authors were seen to adapt these stories theologically for Israel and to identify them as part of God's work of blessing. But the doctrine has also been described as the horizon of biblical theology, relating creation to world order and arriving at the conclusion that history is the realization of this order. "Only within this horizon could Israel understand its special experiences with God in history." Nevertheless, it appears that in most cases the dating of texts lies at the bottom of the question as to where to position creation within the framework of Old Testament theology. Though the Bible begins with creation, biblical theologies mostly do not. Traditional critical approaches to Old Testament texts do not allow for an early dating of Genesis 1-11. Most scholarship has rather taken Isaiah 40-55, the so-called Deutero-Isaiah, dated by literary criticism to post-exilic times, as a chronologically secure paradigm for creation in the Old Testament against which other texts, amongst them Genesis 1-3, are then benchmarked. This leads inevitably to the conclusion that creation is a late addition to the theological thinking of the Old Testament. Implicit in this approach is the danger of circular reasoning, since creation texts are being dated on the basis of religious historical paradigms as late and are then used to date other creation passages accordingly: "It is obviously somewhat paralyzing to realize that we form a picture of Israel's religious history in part on the basis of certain texts which, in turn, with the help of the picture obtained by historical research, we subsequently judge with respect to 'authenticity' and historical truth." Recognizing the unsatisfying results of such a dating scheme, an approach to the topic of creation in the Old Testament should depart from a contextual reading of the texts in question in the various bodies of Old Testament literature.