Main news for 4 February 2026

At first glance the biblical Poem of Creation may appear to be a purely mythological text, and many people view it exactly that way, as an ancient myth that entered the Bible because no other versions of cosmogony, the teaching about the origin of the world, existed in antiquity. Conversely, there are also readers who are certain that the biblical Poem of Creation is history that must be understood literally, exactly as it is written.

What, then, does the author of the poem have in mind? And when was it written? The commonly accepted view among Bible scholars today is that this poem, like the entire so-called Prologue of the Book of Genesis, the first eleven chapters of the book, appeared in Babylon during the Babylonian Exile. In those times people already knew enough about the world to reject a mythological picture of it. The issue is clearly not that the author lacked the means to describe the reality he wanted to describe. He simply uses the traditional language of the so-called cosmogonic poetry of his time; in his day there were already poems narrating the origin and formation of the cosmos, and the author creates a Yahwist version of such a poem. It is no accident that he begins the history of the world with God creating "the heavens and the earth." However one understands this "heavens and earth," and people have understood it very differently, one thing is clear: the issue is the universe in all its fullness and wholeness.

One can, of course, destroy this wholeness; the second verse of the first chapter speaks precisely of the "earth" torn away from "heaven," of destroyed wholeness, and then chaos appears in the world. More precisely, it is the part torn away from the whole that plunges into chaos: it becomes formless and without qualities, "formless and void" in the Synodal translation. This is exactly what the "earth" becomes when it is torn away from "heaven," a part of the universe separated from the whole.

Then the majestic picture of creation unfolds, already in space and time, which appear together with creation itself. And this creation contains a certain drama, which the author of the poem does not describe directly, but hints at: at first, on the "first day," all creation is permeated with light, not physical light, but the light of God's presence, which in Yahwist spiritual experience is often accompanied by radiance. But on the "second day" something happens in the world: the radiant "one day" (exactly so: one, not first in a series of other days) is replaced by chaos. Water bursts into the world, the very water mentioned in the description of the "earth" torn away from "heaven," water as a symbol of chaos. God overcomes this chaos by setting a limit to it and creating the world as if anew, inside the water, building there, in the space He created within the chaos, a new world in which we came to live. There, in this new world, the human being will also appear, so that in turn he may take part in the drama of the universe, where he will have a special role, and only on the human being himself will it depend how he fulfills it.

When reading the poem about the creation of the world, its distinctive drama immediately stands out. Indeed, on the first day the whole world is permeated by the light of God's presence, which in the Yahwist tradition is known by the name "the glory of Yahweh" or "the glory of the Lord." It accompanies the people throughout all their history; and on the first day, according to the sacred writer, the whole world shines with this light, and darkness has no place in it. Then, on the second day, water overwhelms the world, the very water spoken of in the introduction to the poem, in those first two verses that precede the description of the six days of creation. But in the introduction water appears only in the second verse, where the earth is separated from heaven; in the first verse, where it forms one whole with heaven, there is no water. And yet water is a symbol of chaos and of the dark powers opposed to God: so it is in all the mythological worlds of all ancient peoples, and so it is in the Bible. And then it turns out that the creation of the world as we know it today was not simple or easy. It took place despite the resistance of those powers opposed to God that tried to hinder Him in carrying out His plans, perhaps long before the appearance not only of man, but also of the world in which we live today. And in due time, the human being was inevitably to become a participant in this confrontation.

When reading about the beginning of the world, we need to remember that the Book of Genesis, like the whole Bible, is written not about the past but about the present. In a special ancient symbolic language, it reflects truths that will never change, regardless of the development of physics or history. This short account testifies to the inseparable connection between what surrounds us - light, water, earth, trees and grasses, fish, animals, and birds - and the One who stands behind all of it and is not part of this world. How can this mystery be conveyed? The world did not create itself, and we did not create it. There is the One who is responsible for this world, who grants the world existence and rejoices in its beauty, seeing that it is "very good." If we learn to contemplate this mystery, then everything good and beautiful in this world will speak to us about Him, about the One who created the world in the very beginning and gave it to us.