"And the Spirit of God Hovered": A Dialogic Reading of the Opening Lines of Genesis

Abstract

Abstract:In this article the author proposes a new reading for the opening words of the Bible, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now the earth was unformed and void . . . ; and the spirit of God hovered over the water" (Gen. 1:1–2). This new reading is based on the connections drawn by Otto Eissfeldt between the Ugaritic literature and the Bible. God, according to this opening picture, connects intimately, empathetically, with the existing matter (the tehom) in dialogic address. It is from this relationship, which today we call "love," that all comes to be "born" from the material "womb" of the tehom. From this "big bang," all continues to be born.