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Readings for Daily Masses in
Weeks 5 - 6 in Ordinary Time, Year I
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The Divine Origins of Human Existence
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If you’ve ever wanted to read the Bible from cover to cover, this may be the best time in our two-year daily lectionary cycle to start! In weeks 5 and 6 in Ordinary Time, our first readings are highlights from the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis. After Mass each day, we suggest reading from that point in Genesis through the conclusion of the next day’s reading.
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Genesis 1-11 tells of the origins of the world and humanity before the advent of written history. These chapters are not intended as factual reporting of distinct, actual events. One term used by scholars for this genre of writing is “mythopoeic” – literature that, like both myth and poetry, speaks to great truths, whether or not each detail is literally factual. Whether or not these events – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, the Tower of Babel – happened as related in the Bible, they still speak to great truths in our understanding of who God is, and how we are called to relate to God.
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Most other ancient Near Eastern societies had their own set of creation and flood stories. We can better understand the religious beliefs of the ancient Israelites (before 1,000 BC) and the later Judahites (up through 500 BC) by comparing and contrasting these creation and flood stories with those of neighbor societies. Notably, the God of Genesis 1-11 primarily acts out of love, while the gods of other societies are presented as selfish and capricious.
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Many of us have heard the captivating stories of Genesis 1-11 since childhood, and they have inspired artists in written and visual media for millennia. Later biblical authors frequently allude to these stories, such as Luke 3 referencing Genesis 2, Romans 5 referring to Genesis 3, and Acts 2 contrasting with Genesis 11. Adults re-examining the familiar stories of Genesis 1-11 may find new insights, nuances, and contradictions. The Holy Spirit inspired our ancestors who first told these stories, those who passed the oral traditions down through the generations, those who wrote down the stories, and those who edited and redacted them. What is the Holy Spirit saying to us through these stories here and now? -
The word “bible” literally means library. It combines a variety of perspectives into one document, creating a tapestry richer than any one perspective could offer, of how we experience God in our lives. In his Documentary Hypothesis of 1878, Julius Wellhausen identified multiple contributors to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). As most biblical scholars have further developed Wellhausen’s ideas over the past 140 years, the consensus recognizes four or more major sources contributing to the Pentateuch. It probably reached its final form during or after the Babylonian exile, c. 586-536 BC. Therefore, all ideas in the Pentateuch about the relationship between God and humans are filtered through the Jewish identity crisis caused by the exile.At least two of the four sources likely contributed to Genesis 1 - 11:
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The Yahwist (symbolized by Wellhausen with the letter J) may have first written down ancient Israelite oral traditions while serving in the court of Solomon, c. 950 BC. J presents God with human qualities, having conversations with individual people. J presents a “spontaneous” style of ancient Israelite worship.
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The Priestly author (P) probably wrote during or after the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC, sharing much with the perspectives of Ezekiel and Ezra. P promotes the necessity of the priestly rituals of ancient Judaism. P is highly attentive to names, details, and lists.
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It is not easy to reconcile the two creation stories in Genesis into one coherent narrative. Genesis 2: 4b - 25 (God bringing all the animals before the man in search of a suitable partner) was most likely written down by J. Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a (God’s orderly creation of the world in six days) was probably written by P in response to the Babylonian creation myth called the Enuma Elish. Nevertheless, J and P together present a God who is both in command of the entire universe and intimately concerned with each one of us.
In the story of Noah and the Ark, we can see a single narrative switching back and forth between J and P. For example, notice the disparity between Genesis 7:2 and 7:8 in the number of pairs of clean animals God instructs Noah to take on the ark.
Zooming out to a wider perspective, we can sense that Genesis 1-11 is not just a telling of the ancient past. The authors and redactors of the Pentateuch clearly intended for these chapters to foreshadow events later in Israel’s history, to speak to our daily experience of God, and to imagine when God’s kingdom is fully realized on the earth in the future. Does Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a foreshadow Solomon’s building of the temple? Does it speak to our role today as stewards of God’s creation? Does it predict the paradise of heaven? The authors and redactors probably intended all of these things… and more!
The response to the first reading during these weeks is always from the Book of Psalms. The gospel reading is taken from the Gospel of Mark, Chapters 6 - 9.
Shortly after Pentecost, we will pick up the narrative in Chapter 12 of Genesis and work through highlights from the first 8 books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth) over the summer. For anyone wishing to study the Jewish Scriptures in more detail, we highly recommend the engaging and easy-to-read Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction by Paulist Fr. Larry Boadt, CSP.
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