Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
For those who meditate on God’s Law day and night, beginning with the sacred history of Genesis, the Word of God is a never-failing spring, continually revealing new connections between the works of Creation, Redemption and Sanctification. In this newsletter we will see how Scripture bears witness to the fact that God Himself “wrote” three times and how these three instances of writing “by the finger of God” bear witness to the literal historical truth of the sacred history of Genesis.
The Book of the Generation of Adam
The Hebrew word for write, transliterated “saphar,” has, among its meanings, “to scratch in clay.” In Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, we read:
| 5608. saphar |
| Strong's Exhaustive Concordance commune, account; declare, number, penknife, reckon, scribe, show forth, speak, A primitive root; properly, to score with a mark as a tally or record, i.e. (by implication) to inscribe, and also to enumerate; intensively, to recount, i.e. Celebrate -- commune, (ac-)count; declare, number, + penknife, reckon, scribe, shew forth, speak, talk, tell (out), writer. |
The first appearance of Saphar in the Bible occurs in Genesis 5:1:
Genesis 5:1
HEB: זֶ֣ה סֵ֔פֶר תּוֹלְדֹ֖ת אָדָ֑ם
NAS: This is the book of the generations
KJV: This [is] the book of the generations of Adam
DRB: This is the book of the generation of Adam.
The use of Saphar for “book” suggests that the Toledoth, the histories of the families of the patriarchs, may have been written on clay tablets from the beginning. Writer and researcher Mike Gladieux has demonstrated that the sacred history of Genesis is divided into sections that were almost certainly written on clay tablets according to the conventions used by scribes as early as the middle of the third millennium B.C. According to Gladieux:
A . . . repeated pattern contained within the documents of Genesis . . . indicates their ancient origin as clay tablets. The “catch-lines” that were commonly used to connect tablet to tablet in a series are still in evidence within the text of Genesis. The following phrases appear to be pairs of “catch-lines,” as identified by Wiseman:
1:1 God created the heavens and the earth 2:4 Lord God made the heavens and the earth 2:4 When they were created 5:2 When they were created 6:10 Shem, Ham, and Japheth 10:1 Shem, Ham, and Japheth 10:32 After the flood 11:10 After the flood 11:26 Abram, Nahor, and Haran 11:27 Abram, Nahor, and Haran 25:12 Abraham’s son 25:19 Abraham’s son 36:1 Who is Edom 36:8 Who is Edom 36:9 Father of the Edomites (lit., Father Edom) 36:43 Father of the Edomites (lit., Father Edom)
The very striking repetition of these phrases exactly where the tablets begin and end will best be appreciated by those scholars acquainted with the methods of the scribes in Babylonia, for those were the arrangements then in use to link the tablets together. I submit that the repetition of these words and phrases precisely in those verses attached to the colophon, “These are the origins of” cannot be mere coincidence. They have remained buried in the text of Genesis, their significance apparently unnoticed.
When taken together the phrases in Wiseman’s list of catch-lines establish the overall unity of the Genesis account from 1:1 through 37:2. They show that each author had the previous sections of Genesis before him and that he consciously connected his narrative to the section that preceded his. With this understanding of the connecting phrases as identified by Wiseman we can arrive at the following simple conclusions about the bulk of Genesis (1:1 through 37:2):
- Adam had in his possession the first unnamed account when he wrote his story. He consciously linked his history to it as a continuation of it. This is seen from the connecting “catch-lines” in 1:1 and 2:4, “God created the heavens and the earth,” and “Lord God made the heavens and the earth.”
- Likewise, the “catch-lines” in 2:4 and 5:2 show that Noah was consciously connecting his account to the previous writings, which he also possessed. This is shown because “when they were created” appears in both verses.
- In this way we can see that each of the persons named as authors were in possession of the previous accounts and made a clear statement in their writing to connect what they were writing to a previous account.
- Thus Genesis 1:1 through 37:2 was a cumulative work written by the succession of authors named in the signature lines. It was a carefully accumulated history that was passed on to successive generations throughout the ages. It was being consciously connected together by the successive authors. This basic insight is most important and arises from our understanding of the historical context within which the book arose. Knowing these basic facts about how the book of Genesis was written down is vital to determining its genre and to interpreting it correctly.
Thus, we have established the original source documents for the book of Genesis, and we have determined the basic unity of the composition through 37:2.
Mike Gladieux goes on to explain that the book of Genesis can be divided into nine sections that were originally written by people whom we can now identify:
1:1-2:4
This is the book of the origins of the heavens and the earth, the only tablet that has no personal signature. This is because no human could know from personal first-hand experience the information that it contains. We will hold that it has no human author. Rather, the Lord wrote this section and gave it to Adam while fellowshipping with him in the garden.
2:5-5:2
This is the history of Adam, his personal first-hand story.
The “Finger of God” Wrote the Ten Commandments
We have seen that there is good reason to believe that God Himself wrote what we now know as the first chapter of Genesis for our first father, St. Adam. With this in mind, it is remarkable to reflect on the fact that the next time the Bible reveals that God “wrote” is when He wrote the Ten Commandments for Moses on Tablets of Stone. As Moses testifies:
And the Lord gave me two tables of stone written with the finger of God, and containing all the words that He spoke to you in the mount from the midst of the fire, when the people were assembled together (Deuteronomy 9:10).
Is it not remarkable that the first words that God “wrote” for St. Adam on the first tablet of the sacred history of Genesis were summed up on the first table of the Law when God wrote the Third Commandment:
Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day. Six days you may labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of YHWH your God. You shall not do any work…In six days YHWH made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day (Exodus 20:8-11).
With this repetition, Our Lord reassured His people that the same Lord who had created the world in the beginning was also their Redeemer from slavery in Egypt.
The Mysterious Writings of Our Holy Redeemer
Scripture records only one other time when “God wrote.” After testifying that He drove out demons by “the finger of God,” Our Lord Jesus Christ wrote in the ground on one single occasion. According to St. John’s Gospel:
And Jesus went unto mount Olivet. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came to him, and sitting down he taught them. And the scribes and the Pharisees bring unto him a woman taken in adultery: and they set her in the midst, And said to him: Master, this woman was even now taken in adultery. Now Moses in the law commanded us to stone such a one. But what sayest thou? And this they said tempting him, that they might accuse him. But Jesus bowing himself down, wrote with his finger on the ground. When therefore they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said to them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again stooping down, he wrote on the ground. But they hearing this, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest.
Commenting on this passage, St. Augustine explains that Our Holy Redeemer wrote:
to signify that it was He who had written the old law on tables of stone, but that the new law was to be written on the productive earth. But what did Christ write? He could not in the paved court of the temple cut out the shape of the letters, but merely delineate them with His finger. But He seems to have marked out something to put them to shame, or to expose their sin. For He added, in explanation of what He had done, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (emphasis added).
From this commentary, we can see that the three instances in Holy Scripture in which God “writes” “with the finger of God” refer back in different ways to the first chapter of Genesis where God revealed how He had created the heavens and the earth and all they contain for man, whose body was formed from “the slime of the earth.” This may well have been the same “slime of the earth,” or “clay,” that God would have used to inscribe His account of creation for our first father, St. Adam.
Through the prayers of the Mother of God and of all the Saints, may the Holy Ghost guide us all into all the Truth!
Yours in Christ through the Holy Theotokos in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
