Micheal W. Palmer Page 1 of 7 In the Beginning: Storytelling and the Common Good! I. Ancient Historiography! " The earliest efforts at writing history relied heavily on documents that weren t written to tell unbiased stories about the past. They used evidence such as government annals, chronicles, lists of kings, and proclamations engraved in stone. They are severely limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic events, ignoring economic and social concerns almost completely, and certainly not addressing the issue of cosmic origins." " Herodotus, writing a little more than 400 years before the time of Jesus, is often called the father of history. He was the first ancient writer known to collect his materials systematically and critically, then arrange them into a coherent narrative. He called his work Ἱστορίαι, Greek for the things that were. From that Greek word we get our English word History. Horodotus use of this word gave the name to a new genre." " The creation story we heard from Genesis, as well as the one in the first chapter of that book the seven-day story that we did not hear were written well before these developments. They are not attempts at writing history in any sense." " The comments we heard from John s Gospel were written after Herodotus, but they comprise a poem, again, not an attempt to write history." " When we read these ancient texts we must acknowledge that they convey something that their authors considered to be true, but not historical. They were not trying to convey the facts about how the world came to be. They were much more interested in explaining what the world is (or rather, what is was at their time). Talk about the past was a means for understanding the present." " I want to invite you this morning to take a journey through time with me so that we can do exactly that talk about the past to inform our present. We will visit an ancient family and one of the earliest tellings of the Adam and Eve story, then we will travel forward in time to visit ancient Jerusalem and examine the context of the seven-day creation story. We ll
Micheal W. Palmer Page 2 of 7 then visit Palestine at the time of Jesus and hear a poem about the meaning of creation. Finally, we ll look at our present and consider our own narratives." II. Adam and Eve! " Over a thousand years before Jesus, a nomadic people wandered in Canaan the area where both Israel and Syria are now. Some of those early nomads had once been slaves in Egypt. While they identified ethnically with others like them, and travelled in large numbers, there was no national government, and little social structure other than family groupings." " Imagine a nighttime gathering of one of those families. Life is hard and extremely basic, with food often hard to find, and death a regular part of family experience. On this particular night, perhaps knowing that some in the clan have a difficult time finding meaning in their meager existence and felt ashamed of their poverty, Hulda I ll call her Hulda, though we know neither her name nor her gender begins to talk as they sit around the fire." On the day God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant yet grew from the earth and not a single herb had sprung up for God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and no one was there to break up the ground, but a mist would rise from the earth and quench the thirst of the land. On that day God took the adama, the dirt, and formed from the adama, an adam. He breathed into the adam the breath of life, and the adam became alive. God planted a garden in Eden, back in the east. Out of the ground God made every tree grow that is pleasing to look at and good for food. There he put the dirt-man he had made so he could till it and care for it. But then God said, It is not good that the adam is alone; I will make a partner to help. God began to make animals from the ground like he had made the adam. God made them. The dirt-man named them. But none of them was an appropriate partner. So God made the adam sleep and took one of his ribs and closed up the wound.
Micheal W. Palmer Page 3 of 7 From the rib God formed a female human, an isha and introduced her to the adam. The man said, She is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called isha, since she came from a ish human, for she came from human. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they join together. The man and the woman were both naked, but they were not ashamed. " This is a story about family written at a time when there was no national government, no permanent homes, only very basic social structure. The key structure for day-to-day living was a couple and their interdependence. It is a very basic story." " Later this story would develop further in at least two different communities. It would become a moralistic tale about good and evil. It would take on an anti-intellectual bent and a threat of death for disobedience, but in these early days, it was likely not so." III. Seven-Day Creation Story! " By the late 1100s BCE a Hebrew nation was beginning to form in response to Philistine pressure in Canaan. It grew quickly and controlled the central highlands, but in the early 900s that nation would split into two Israel in the North, and Judah in the south with its capital in Jerusalem. A magnificent new temple stood in that city, and centralized government was now a fact of life. The Hebrew people were no longer wandering nomads, and the demands of state were far removed from those of nomadic families. " " A requirement that everyone, even slaves and pack animals had not only a right to rest but an obligation to do so, ran counter to the demands of business, and if that requirement were going to stand against national economic pressure, it needed a narrative. In the temple a new creation story was beginning to be repeated. It spoke of seven days of creation, just like the traditional seven day work and rest cycle. Even God rested, the story said, and those who follow God should too. " " This was an activist story. One that suggested that humans have the authority to care for the natural world, including their animals, and to
Micheal W. Palmer Page 4 of 7 demand a break from the constant work that everywhere was imposed on the poor. Stories matter. Stories can change reality." IV. Babylon! " Early in the 500s BCE Judah was overrun by the growing Babylonian Empire. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and everyone who was anybody was carried off to Babylon. In the panic of thinking that all would would be lost, that the culture could disappear forever, someone, or more likely a committee of someones, wrote the old stories down. " " They didn t seem to care that the two stories were logically incompatible, that in one the plants were created after the first human, and man and woman were the beginning and ending of the story, while in the other, humanity both male and female was created near the end as the pinnacle of creation, after both the plants and the animals. It wasn t important that one story spoke of creation as a single day, while the other spoke of seven days. " " Both stories were true in ancient terms, not that they got the history right, but that they spoke something real, something authentic about human existence and the will of God. Something about not just the way things are, but the way they need to be." V. Logos! " By the time of Jesus, the realities in Palestine had once again shifted radically. For most of the last 500 years there had been no independent nation of Israel, only an occupied land where that nation had once existed. In the 500s BCE, the Persians had conquered the Babylonians and allowed many of the Jews to return to Palestine, but not as an independent nation. Only as a province of the Persian Empire." " Then, in the 330s BCE the Greeks wrested control of the area from the Persians and set about a radical program of re-enculturation, building Greek schools, requiring the use of Greek in commerce and government, encouraging Greek dress, diet, architecture, values." " There was significant push-back from conservative Jews, of course, but some parts of Jewish society welcomed the changes, viewing the old customs and laws as antiquated and out of touch with the new world. By the 160s BCE a serious misstep on the part of the current Greek Emperor
Micheal W. Palmer Page 5 of 7 based in Syria would lead to open revolt and a bloody war that lasted roughly 20 years, but finally resulted in Israel s independence. " " From the 140s to 63 BCE less than 100 years Israel was independent again, but then the Romans came. They sub-divided Israel into three regions, and put them under the control of the new Roman province of Syria." " First-century Palestine was a tumultuous place. " " " Life outside Palestine was equally tumultuous. The expanding Roman Empire had been through multiple civil wars and exercised enormous brutality in suppressing them. The conquest of Israel was a part of establishing order at the end of one of those civil wars." " " In such a world, daily existence could seem entirely capricious and void of meaning. The Stoics, the most popular philosophical movement of the time, acknowledged that the world on the surface seemed random and meaningless, but asserted that there was a divine reason, a logos, behind it all. This divine reason, or logos, was the force behind the creation of this seemingly random world. And it was this logos that gave meaning to an otherwise cruel and capricious existence." " John s Gospel was written in a community very conversant with this kind of reasoning. For them, Jesus represented that logos. " " This was not entirely new thinking. Philo of Alexandria, a prominent Jewish philosopher contemporary with Jesus, had used the same term (Logos) to denote divine wisdom that force of creation discussed in Proverbs. He had tried to unify Stoic philosophy with Jewish theology." " Some stoic thinker about this time, we don t know who, penned a poem about the Logos. It probably sounded something like this:" In the beginning was the Logos, The Logos was with God, And the Logos was God. This is how it was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through the Logos, Without it not one thing came to be.
Micheal W. Palmer Page 6 of 7 What did come to be was Life, And Life was the Light for all people. The Light burns in the darkness, And the darkness does not put it out. It was the true Light, Which gives light to everyone Who comes into the world. It was in the world, And the world came to be through it, But the world did not know the Logos. It came to what was its own, And what was its own did not recognize it. But to whoever received it, The Logos gave power To become children of God, Not physically, By the will of the flesh Or the will of a man, But born of God. " The author of John s Gospel heard these words as a wonderful description of Jesus. Where had John s congregation found meaning and purpose in their chaotic and dangerous world if not through Jesus? Either borrowing the gender-neutral stoic poem, or inventing it himself, he added, " And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us. " Like the others, this story of origins is really an attempt to understand, even to direct, the author s present reality. This is the function of stories of origins in the ancient world, and John choosing this poem for the beginning of his Gospel helped his community find a reason-to-be in the chaos of their time.
Micheal W. Palmer Page 7 of 7 VI. Conclusion: Today s Story! " In 2014 we may not use stories in the way people in the ancient world did, but stories are still powerful tools for understanding who we are, and what our place in the world ought to be." " What stories do we tell ourselves about our world? What narrative plays in our imagination guiding our decisions about how to live, what to buy, how to work, how to play?" " The stories we tell ourselves about the way things were inform how we view the way things are. And together they help guide our steps into the future. " " What stories can we tell that will help our children and grandchildren face a world that will inevitably be dramatically different from the one outside our windows this morning? We know the oceans are rising. We know the planet is warming. We know that storms are becoming more regular and stronger. We know that the rate of species extinction is accelerating. And unlike our ancient predecessors, we have the tools of science to help understand the causes. " " How do we speak about these things in a way that will inspire care for the Earth and prepare our children to live justly in the new world that is coming? " " Creation is on the move. Let our faith open our minds and our mouths to speak truth that goes beyond fact to justice. May the Creator, who is still present among us, empower us with the boldness to speak and act creatively." " Benediction! Go now in the power of the Creator to" " Think anew," " " Speak anew, and " " Act anew, " In the new world that is even now being born.