Sevens

In his lively recent study of creation, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder , William Brown uses the typical weapons to neutralize the historical claims of Genesis 1: ANE parallels, hermeneutics, a one-sided view of biblical authority.  He takes contemporary scientific theories far too seriously, and bends the Bible until it fits.

But there are some valuable things here too.

Like: “God ‘saw’ and pronounced created ‘good’ seven times, ‘earth’ or ‘land’ (same word in Hebrew) appears twenty-one times; ‘God’ is repeated thirty-five times.  The number seven, or multiples thereof, also crops up within certain discrete passages: Genesis 1:1 consists of seven words; 1:2 features fourteen words; Genesis 2:1-3 renders a word count of thirty five.  In fact, the total word count of the narrative proper (1:1-2:3) is 469 in Hebrew (7 x 67).”

Like most commentators on Genesis 1-2, Brown recognizes the connections with temple-building, but goes further to suggest that the text actually forms a triadic structure matching the structure of Israel’s sanctuary: Day 0 (1:1) is the portico, the six days form the nave, and the Holy of Holies is the Sabbath.  The temple-building includes the installation of an image of the Creator, the creation of man on Day 6.m