Rough Draft NOT for citation

(Published in Horizons in Biblical Theology 25.2 [2003]: 242-51).

 

Creation, Sin and its Curse, and the People of God:

An Intertextual Reading of Genesis 1-12 and Acts 1-7

 

Thomas E. Phillips

 

Introduction

 

            Recently, with the increasing recognition of the importance of intertextuality within Biblical studies, I have been drawn to reflect more extensively upon a tendency which I have observed recurring in a seemingly random and intermittent fashion among scholars of Acts, that is, the tendency to read portions of the opening chapters of Acts in intertextual dialogue with portions of the pre-patriarchal and early patriarchal narratives in Genesis 1-12.  In a previous research project, I made brief mention of this tendency among scholars without offering any suggestions for how such an array of seemingly random and intermittent intertextual readings could be developed to provide a more consistent intertextual reading with plausibility for contemporary critical readers of Acts.[1]  In this essay, I propose to offer that consistent intertextual reading of Genesis 1-12 and Acts 1-7.  Specifically, I want to consider how three soteriological themes (i.e., creation, sin and its curse, and God’s creation of a people) play a central role in the narratives of both Genesis 1-12 and Acts 1-7 and how reading these narratives intertextually can enhance one’s appreciation both for the evocative power of the creation, “fall,” and redemption themes in Genesis and for their distant echoes in Acts.

Familiar Themes in Genesis

            The creation accounts and the subsequent narratives in Genesis are well known and the theological constructs which order those accounts and narratives have long been recognized.  Genesis opens with the priestly account of creation (1:1-2:4a) as “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (1:2). [2]  In keeping with the priestly concern for the Sabbath, the development of this creation story is placed within the poetic frame of seven days and, in keeping with the priestly writers’ almost entirely positive view of the physical world, the basic goodness of the creation is unequivocally affirmed at the end of each of the six days of active creation (1:4, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).  This priestly assumption of the goodness of creation naturally expands to humanity and thus, in keeping with the generally positive anthropology of the priestly tradition, this first creation account allows human beings to consume whatever vegetarian fare they discover upon the earth.  God informs the male and female whom God has created in God’s image: “I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have for food” (1:29).  Human beings, as essentially good creations, are faced with no prohibitions upon their behavior in this priestly account of creation.

            When we examine the work of the Yahwist in the second creation account (2:4b-25), we find that the wind image is again presented as God created a man “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (2:7), but we also find evidences of a less optimistic theology of creation and a grimmer view of humanity.  Humanity is limited to a single area, a “garden,” and even within this garden, humanity’s culinary choices are limited by the prohibition against eating from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (2:16).  The man is warned, “in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (2:17).  Thus, in keeping with the Yahwist’s generally negative view of creation and humanity, protective prohibitions and the possibility of death enter the creation story even before creation of animals and women.  For the Yahwist, this negative view of creation is so profound that even the serpent, which “the Lord God had made” (3:1), lies to humanity about God (3:4-5). Within the world of the Yahwistic creation, personified “sin is lurking at the door” and “desires” humanity (4:7).  For the Yahwist, the earth itself is “corrupt” and “filled with violence” (6:11-12).

            The Yahwist’s negative anthropology dominates the reminder of the pre-patriarchal narratives with the familiar sin-curse, sin-curse pattern of Genesis 3-11.  First, the serpent lures Adam and Eve into sin (3:6).  In response to this sin, the serpent is cursed (3:14-15) and the ground is cursed (3:17-19).[3]  Then, Cain commits the sin of fratricide against his brother and is cursed (4:11).  After a brief genealogical intermission (designed to demonstrate the universal and intergenerational character of this sin-curse phenomenon), the Yahwist asserts that not only is creation tainted by sin and corruption, but also that humanity is desperately evil.  The Yahwist speaks for God and explains that

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually (6:5).

 

            For the Yahwist, the problem of sin and its curse is so profound that a new creation is required.  Therefore, God preserves the one righteous man, Noah, to serve as a remnant of the previous creation and then removes the “breath of life” from the rest of the creation via a flood (6:9, 17).  This flood is an act of anti-creation.  As Gerhard von Rad explains

When the heavenly ocean breaks forth upon the earth below, and the primeval sea beneath the earth, which is restrained by God, now freed from its bonds, gushes up through the yawning chasms onto the earth, then there is a destruction of the entire cosmic system according to biblical cosmogony.  The two halves of the chaotic primeval sea, separated—the one up, the other below—by God’s creative government (ch. 1.7-9), are again united; creation begins to sink again into chaos (von Rad 1972: 128).

 

 Then, the “breath of life” which was preserved with Noah in the ark (7:15) was given a new creation to inhabit when God again “made a wind blow over the earth” (8:1).  This wind which blows over the earth echoes back to the original creative activity (1:2) and provides the framework for understanding the post-flood world as a new creation in which God’s creative activity has again overcome the forces of chaos.  God then promised that the ground of this new creation would never again be cursed because of human sin (8:21).  This initial divine promise to the new creation assures the earth and its habitants that they will suffer no further curse from God on account of humanity’s ongoing sin.  Yahweh vows:

I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done (8:21).

 

The Yahwist’s negative view of creation is, therefore, somewhat tempered by God’s activity in the new creation after the flood.[4]  The creation’s improved condition in the post-flood world is further emphasized by the inclusion of “all flesh” within God’s post-flood covenant with Noah and the new creation (8:11, 15). 

            The earth and its non-human inhabitants have, therefore, been freed from further effects of the sin-curse pattern by having their fate separated from that of humanity.  Even though earth and its non-human inhabitants remain under the curse announced after Adam’s sin (2:17), the earth and these non-human inhabitants will suffer no additional divine curse on account of human sin (8:21).  However, the problem of human sin remains—and expands.  Immediately after being loosed on the new creation, humanity again proves itself to be sinful.  Noah plants a vineyard,[5] gets drunk, and shames himself by lying naked in his tent (9:20-21).[6]  His son, Ham, then shames himself by looking upon his father’s nakedness,[7] an action which resumes the pre-flood pattern of sin-curse as the Canaanite descendents of Ham are placed under a divine curse (10:25-27).  After another genealogical intermission, humanity’s disobedience to the divine will is again demonstrated in their attempt to build a tower to the heavens for the express purpose of preventing themselves from being “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (11:4).  Of course, aversion to being dispersed over the earth was in direct defiance of God’s first directive to Noah after the flood.  God had directed Noah and his descendants to “fill the earth” (9:1).  Although God did not specifically curse these sinful people, God judged their sin both by multiplying their languages so that they could not understand one another and by scattering them over the earth so that they were forced to obey the divine command (11:9). 

            Throughout these pre-patriarchal narratives, therefore, we have seen the familiar pattern of creation followed by human sin and divine curse upon that sin.  After Adam’s and Eve’s culinary delight in the forbidden fruit and Cain’s fratricidal attack on Abel, God sought to remedy this pattern of disobedience by means of a cleansing flood and a new creation.  After Noah’s drunken indulgence and exhibitionist shame, and Ham’s naked indiscretion toward his father, and humanity’s corporate building project in open defiance of the divine directive to fill the land, God broke the pattern of sin-curse by calling a people for God’s name—and the patriarchal narratives begin.  The divine answer to human sin and the curse that accompanies such sin is the creation of a people through whom God could bring blessing to all those cursed by sin.  God’s hydroregeneration experiment with Noah demonstrated that the problem of sin and its curse could not be overcome by a new creation.  The actions of Noah and Ham in the immediate post-flood world demonstrated that humanity could be expected to remain essentially antagonistic to divine goodness—even when placed within a new creation.  The source of creation’s curse was humanity and humanity’s sin, not the non-human creation.  To be sure, the non-human creation remains under the curse of sin, but the source of that curse is humanity.  The central problem is emphatically human sin.

In the patriarchal narratives, therefore, God addresses the problem of sin and its curse in human terms and implements a familial remedy to the problem of sin and its curse.  God creates a people to reverse the curse of sin by spreading the blessing of God.[8] This remedy for the curse of sin comes to Abram in the form of both a command and a promise (Yarchin 1980).  God speaks to Abram, saying:

Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed (12:1-3).

           

            With Abram’s call, the themes which we sought to investigate in Genesis have all been annunciated.  Creation was followed by two examples of sin and its curse (Gen. 1-5).  God offered a new creation, which was followed by two more examples of sin and its curse (Gen. 6-11).  The only answer to this repeated pattern of sin and its curse was the creation of a people who would overcome the curse of sin with the blessing of God (Gen. 12).

Echoes of Familiar Themes in Acts

            In Genesis, we found that the three themes of creation, sin and its curse, and God’s creation of a people were particularly prominent.  The order in which these themes appeared in the narrative was highly significant.  The narrative began with God’s creative activity, which was followed by human sin and the curse of sin.  God then cleansed the earth and initiated a new creation, which was again followed by human sin and the curse of sin.  The curse brought into existence by humanity’s sin was then addressed in a new way through the creation of a people who were to overcome the curse of sin through the blessing of God.  The thesis of this paper is that these same themes appear in Acts, but that they appear in a different order and thus offer a different theological perspective.  Rather than presenting creation (Gen. 1:1-2:25), sin and its curse (Gen. 3:1-6:7), new creation (Gen. 6:8-9:16), renewed sin and its renewed curse (Gen. 9:17-11:32), and the creation of a people (Gen. 12), Acts presents the creation of a people (Acts 1:1-26), the new creation (2:1-4:37) and then sin and its renewed curse (5:1ff).  The alteration of the order of these themes is significant, because in Acts, God has taken a preemptive strike at the problem of sin and its curse by beginning with the creation of a people.  In Genesis, the creation of a people, the only remedy to the ongoing problem of sin and its curse, came only after the problem of sin and its curse had emerged in both the creation and the new creation.  In Acts, God created the remedy for the problem (the creation of a people)—even before the problem (sin and its curse) was made manifest.  Let me now offer a reading of Acts which illustrates this thesis.

The Creation of a People (Acts 1:1-27)

 

            After the preface, which links the gospel of Luke with the Acts of the Apostles, Acts immediately enters in a dialogue between the resurrected Jesus and the apostles in which the apostles asked Jesus: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel” (1:6).  Jesus answered this question about time and about Israel in terms which completely reframed the issues.  He insisted that the apostles were not to concern themselves with times and seasons, but that they were to be his witnesses to all the earth (1:7-8).  The significance of the apostles’ question and Jesus’ evasive answer must not be overlooked.  The apostles were asking about the people of God.  The apostles wished to know if Israel, the people who have been called to bring a blessing to all the earth (Gen. 12:3), was now to be empowered to complete its divinely appointed mission.  Jesus wanted the apostles to know that they were now a people with the divinely appointed mission to be his witnesses to all the earth.  Jesus’ answer redefined both the people of God and their mission.  He asserted that “You [not Israel] will be my [not Yahweh’s] witnesses” (1:8).[9]  As James Dunn explains, “1.8 functions as a correction of the false perspective or misleading emphasis articulated in 1.6” (Dunn 1996: 9; also see Kee 1997: 24).  The people of God being created through the apostles, like the people of God created through Abraham, were charged with a universal mission, to spread God’s message and blessing to the entire “earth” (gÒ,  Acts 1:8; Gen. 12:3).[10]

            This theme of the creation of the people of God dominates the reminder of this first chapter of Acts.  The remaining eleven apostles are listed by name (1:13-14) as they begin leading the community of 120 believers[11] in their selection of a replacement for Judas, whose personal (and fatal) demonstration of the power of gravity (and sin) had left the ranks of the apostles unacceptably diminished.[12]  This divinely mandated impulse (de², 1:21) to replace Judas is particularly significant for those seeking to understand issues of identity in Acts (that is, who are the people of God?).  Why did the apostles feel compelled to replace Judas?  According the narrative, two issues were particularly significant.  First, the apostles believed that their ranks should include exactly twelve men.[13]  They cast lots to determine whether they would choose Joseph or Matthias.  Although both candidates were apparently qualified (1:21-23), they never considered making both apostles.  They needed exactly twelve apostles.  Second, they apparently had no intention of establishing twelve as a permanent number for the apostles because they enunciated criteria for apostleship which ensured that the ministry of apostleship could not survive beyond the first generation of Christianity.  The candidates for apostleship must “have accompanied us [the original apostles] during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us” (1:21-22).[14]  Such candidates could only exist in the first generation of Christianity. 

            Why did the apostles need to replace Judas with a twelfth apostle?  The apostles were under divine mandate to reconstitute the twelve in order to demonstrate the church’s role as the new people of God, the new Israel.  God created God’s people in Genesis through the twelve tribes of Israel.  God created God’s people in Acts through the twelve apostles.[15]  Both peoples had a global mission.  All the families of the earth were to be blessed through Abram and Sarai (Gen. 12:1-3).  The church’s witness was to extend from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).[16]  In this context, we can see how the third great theme of the early narratives in Genesis, God’s creation of a people, becomes the first great theme of the early narratives in Acts.  In Genesis, the people of God were created so that God could bless the world through them.  In Acts, the new people of God were created so that God could bless the world through them.  In Acts, however, God takes a preemptive strike against sin and its curse by creating a people even before sin and its curse enter the world.  In fact, God’s creation of a people even precedes the (new) creation.  The remedy for sin and its curse was, therefore, established even before the creation in Acts.

In this reading, I have, of course, assumed that the themes of (new) creation and of sin and its curse appear in the subsequent chapters of Acts.  I will now attempt to establish the credibility of this assumption.

The New Creation (Acts 2:1-4:37)

 

            In Acts, the new creation is announced by “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” (2:2).  With the sound of this wind, as Paul Walaskay says, “the reader—ancient and modern—hears echoes from the Old Testament” (Walaskay 1998: 34-35).[17]  The wind of God participates in the creative activity of God in Acts just as it participated in the original creation (1:2) and the post-flood recreation (8:1) in Genesis.[18]  The parallels are striking.

Genesis 1:2—“a wind from God swept over the face of the earth”

Genesis 8:1—“God made a wind blow over the earth”

Acts 2:2—“from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind”

 

In Genesis, creation and recreation are followed by sin and its curse.  In Acts, new creation is followed the reversal of sin and its curse.  After the post-flood recreation, humanity experienced the curse of the multiplication of languages for their towering sin in the Babel episode (Gen. 11).  But immediately after this new creation in Acts, the curse of Babel was reversed as the disciples spoke in other languages and as their ethnically diverse listeners were all able to hear in their own native languages (2:11).  The curse of misunderstanding in Genesis is overcome by the blessing of understanding in Acts as “the ‘confusion of tongues’ at Babel was reversed in this ‘gift of tongues’”  (Carver 1916: 27) and “Pentecost completely redirects the Babel trajectory” (Spencer 1997: 33).[19]  In Genesis, immediately after the recreating activity of the flood, Noah became drunk (9:21).  In the immediate aftermath of the new creation in Acts, the disciples explicitly avoid drunkenness (“these are not drunk” 2:15).[20]  After the first creation in Genesis, Adam and Eve received death as a consequence of their sin (Gen. 3).  After the new creation in Acts, the disciples proclaim the messages that the resurrection has “freed Christ from death” (2:24) and that “in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead” (4:2).  After the first creation in Genesis, only Noah was righteous (Gen. 6:8-9).  After the new creation in Acts, righteousness was expanded as “awe came upon everyone” and “day by day the Lord added to their numbers” (2:43, 47).

Although many of the intertextual echoes in Acts 2 are established by simple repetition of the language from Genesis 1-11, the most significant intertextual echo in Acts 3 is thematic rather than linguistic.  Acts 3:1-10 recounts a healing story in which Peter and John were entering the (Jewish) temple for prayer when they encountered a lame man whom they then healed “in the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (v. 6).  Readers have, of course, long recognized the religious comparison implied within this healing (Hamm 1986: 305-19; Spencer 1997, 46-47).  Peter and John are entering the temple, the center of Jewish religious life, where they encounter a lame man lying before a “beautiful gate” begging for money.  The Jewish religious system, therefore, has money to beautify its religious structures, but reduces helpless human beings to mere beggars.[21]  To make the comparison even less favorable to Judaism, Peter and John then heal the man in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, emphasizing that Christianity gave this needy man both what he most needed and what Judaism was either unable or unwilling to give him.  This implied comparison between Christianity and Judaism is given its ultimate expression when the healed man walked into the temple with Peter and John, symbolizing that Christianity was providing people with unprecedented access to God.  Before his healing, the lame man had been excluded from the temple by the Mosaic Law (Lev. 21:17-20).  But after his healing, Peter and John ushered him into the temple, that is, into the presence of God (Acts 3:8).[22] 

Although we may wish to qualify this implied criticism of Judaism,[23] this comparison between Christianity and Judaism provides an important thematic echo of the early Genesis narrative.  After the first creation in Genesis, the older brother Cain killed his younger sibling Abel after God expressed approval of the younger brother’s worship and disapproval with the older brother’s worship (Gen. 4).  After the new creation in Acts, the spiritual siblings of emerging Christianity, symbolized by Peter and John, and established Judaism, symbolized by the temple and the Jewish people, all praised God together in the temple even after God had expressed approval of Christianity (as a healing faith that provided access to God’s presence) and disapproval of Judaism (as a non-healing faith that denied access to God’s presence).  In the first creation, divine judgment upon the appropriateness of worship activities became an occasion for human sin and fratricide.  In the new creation in Acts, divine judgment upon the appropriateness of religious commitments became an occasion for further worship and cooperation among the siblings.  When read in this manner, this story becomes yet another demonstration of how sin and its curse have been reversed within the new creation seen in Acts.

Immediately in the wake of this healing and its emphasis upon the superiority of Christianity’s offering over the offering of Judaism, the narrative calls Jews to recognize the blessing of God within Christianity.  Peter reminded his Jewish audience that they were the people of God called to overcome the curse of sin with the blessing of God, proclaiming,

You are the descendants of the prophets and of the covenant that God gave to your ancestors, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ (Acts 3:25; cf. Gen. 12:3; 22:18; 26:4).

 

By this proclamation Peter was announcing that God’s promise to Abraham had been fulfilled and that the curse of sin had been overcome by the blessing of God.[24]  For Peter, however, this curse-defeating blessing of God had not come as the Jews expected.  Rather “the blessing leaped over limitations of space, time, and racial descent” (Minear 1994: 50).  The blessing had come through the resurrected Jesus who had created a new people.  This new people had experienced a new creation in which the sin and curse of the old creation had been overcome by the blessing of God.[25]  Peter, therefore, proceeded with a call for the Jews to join this new people who were gathered around Jesus.  Only by joining this new people would Peter’s Jewish siblings be able to experience the new creation with its freedom from sin and the accompanying curse of sin.  Unfortunately, within Acts, the Jews’ worship is portrayed as misguided as was that of Cain, for the Jews had rejected and crucified Jesus (4:11-12).  If any Jews within the narrative remained uncertain of the error of their ways, Peter’s closing comments in regard to the healing at that gate certainly eliminated any excuse for such uncertainty.  In regard to Jesus—in whose name he had healed the lame man—Peter insisted:

There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved (4:12).[26]

           

            The significance of intertextual themes within Acts 2-4, therefore, begins to come into clearer focus.  Acts 2 echoes the theme of creation and witnesses the emergence of a new creation.  This new creation is accompanied by a divine reversal of sin and its curse upon the world.  The sins and curses which followed the creations in Genesis are reversed in this new creation as the tower of Babel is reversed, as death is overcome, as drunkenness is avoided, and as the one righteous man, Noah, is replaced by a growing community of righteousness.  However, two questions remain, will the sin of Adam and Eve be repeated and will the sin of Cain be repeated?  Will the new people of God, the Christians, follow the pattern of Adam and Eve?  Will the older brother, Judaism, follow the pattern of Cain and become jealous and commit fratricide against its younger sibling, Christianity?

The Return of Sin and its Curse (5:1-7:60)

 

            Unfortunately, Christianity did follow the pattern of Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve believed the serpent’s lie about God and suffered death as a consequence, Ananias and Sapphira lied to God and suffered death as a consequence (5:1-11).[27]  Not only did the couple’s sin usher in, in a most discomforting and immediate way, the curse of death,[28] but it was also followed by the return of “Babel” in Acts 6.  Before sin entered the community through Ananias and Sapphira, the church experienced perfect unity (e.g., 2:42-47; 4:32-37) and clear communication (e.g., 2:4-11).  However, after this couple’s sin, the church began to experience disunity and unclear communication (6:1-6).  “The Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food” (6:1).  This division within the community was along linguistic lines.  The Hellenists spoke Greek; the Hebrews spoke Aramaic.[29]  The curse of Babel had returned!  Yet, importantly, in spite of the return of sin and its curse, “the word of God continued to spread” (6:7).  This continued growth of the word of God was possible because God had already taken a preemptive strike against sin by creating a people.  The blessing of God, which could overcome sin and its curse, had already become a reality through God’s creation of a people in Acts 1.  Thus the entry of sin into the new creation in Acts 5 presented no insurmountable barrier to the spread of the divine blessing.  In Acts, unlike in Genesis, the people of God, the only adequate remedy for the emphatically human problem of sin and its curse,[30] existed to counter the effects of sin even before sin and its curse appeared.

            Just as Ananias and Sapphira followed the pattern of Adam and Eve, so also, Judaism, the older sibling of Christianity, followed the pattern of Cain and became “filled with jealousy” (Acts 5:17) and killed its younger brother, Stephen, who criticized its religious practices (Acts 7:2-60).  In the wake of this fratricidal assault upon Stephen, the new creation was as marred by sin and its curse as were the previous creations.  However, there is one key difference between this new creation in Acts and the previous creations in Genesis.  In the church, in the new creation of Acts, God has provided God’s blessing, a new people of God, even before the creation was marred by sin.  The remedy for sin, the blessing of God delivered through God’s people in Jesus Christ, had been provided even before the appearance of sin and its curse.  It is small wonder, therefore, that even after sin (lies and murder) and its curse (the return of death, disunity, and Babel), “the word of God continued to advance and gain adherents” (Acts 12:24) and that “the word of Lord grew mightily and prevailed” (Acts 19:20).  God had created a people to extend God’s blessing to overcome the curse of sin.  God had taken a preemptive strike against sin by creating a people even before the new creation.

Conclusion

            In this paper, I have offered an intertextual reading of Acts 1-7 and Genesis 1-12 in which I have argued that these texts share three themes in common (creation, sin and its curse, and the creation of a people).  I have also argued that the (re)arrangement of these familiar themes within the narrative of Acts is significant and points toward a theology in which God takes a preemptive strike against sin by creating a people even before sin and its curse enter the world—and, in fact, even before the new creation itself.  When read in this way, Acts becomes a theological middle ground between the priestly tradition’s optimistic anthropology and the Yahwistic tradition’s pessimistic anthropology.  Acts shares the Yahwistic tradition’s pessimism regarding the sinfulness of human beings and their social institutions (including the church), but tempers this pessimism with a nearly priestly optimism about the effects of the divine blessing among the people of God.