Research or Religion

By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.  Genesis 2:2  NASB

Seventh – I’ve included two short articles in this study because I believe it is important to see the difference between serious scholarly approaches to the text and religiously motivated approaches to the text.  I am not suggesting that one is better than the other (not yet, anyway).  I am only pointing out that vastly different conclusions are drawn from the same Bible verses with these two approaches.  The first is from Emanual Tov’s articles on textual criticism.

Emanuel Tov

Following the six days of creation recounted in Genesis 1, we read of how God then rests, which provides an etiology (origin story) for Shabbat. But the texts differ regarding when, exactly, God ceased working:

Umberto Cassuto argued that the poetic structure of the verses demonstrates that MT is the superior text in this case.^[2] Both stichs contain “seventh” and express the same point, that God ceased working on this day. Furthermore, I will note that this parallelism continues in the next verse:

^{בראשית ב:ג} וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹהִים אֶת יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ כִּי בוֹ שָׁבַת מִכָּל מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים לַעֲשׂוֹת.

^{Gen 2:3} And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy—having ceased on it from all the work of creation that God had done.

The alternative reading “sixth day” of SP and other sources in Genesis 2:2 developed due to a theological problem: The phrase “God completed the work on the seventh day” implies that God did, in fact, work on that day. The problem is noted by Rashi in his commentary (ad loc.):

ר׳ שמעון אומר: בשר ודם שאינו יודע עתיו ורגעיו צריך להוסיף מחול על הקדש, הקדוש ברוך הוא שיודע עתותיו ורגעיו, נכנס בו כחוט השערה ונראה כאילו כלה בו ביום.

Rabbi Simon says: “Humans, who cannot determine time and moments exactly, need to treat [the final moments] of a regular day as if it were holy, but the Blessed Holy One, who knows time and moments exactly, worked until the seventh day entered by a hair’s breadth [and then stopped], and it seemed [to an observer] as if the work ceased on the [seventh] day.”

דבר אחר: מה היה העולם חסר מנוחה, באתה שבת באת מנוחה, כלתה ונגמרה המלאכה.

Another interpretation: What was the world lacking? Rest. Shabbat came and with it came rest, and in that sense, the work was completed on that day.

Both of Rashi’s interpretations try to avoid the implication that God actually did work on the seventh day. Assuming that MT is the earlier text, this is also what the SP as well as the Greek and Syriac translators (or their Vorlage) were trying to avoid, by changing “seventh” to “sixth.”^[3]

The Talmud mentions the reading of the LXX as one of the ten changes that the Greek translators, each working on their own, made when translating the Torah for King Ptolemy:

^{בבלי מגילה ט.} מעשה בתלמי המלך שכינס שבעים [ו]שנים זקנים והושיב{ו}ם בשבעים [ו]שנים בתים ולא גילה להם על מה כינסם. נכנס אצל כל אחד ואמ[ר] להן כתבו לי תורת משה רבכם. נתן הק’ב’ה’ עצה בלב כל אחד ואחד והסכימה דעתם לדעת אחת וכתבו לו… ויכל ביום הששי וישבת ביו[ם] השב[יעי]…^[4]

1. ^{Megillah 9a}It happened with King Ptolemy that he gathered 72 elders and sat them in 72 houses and didn’t tell them why. He entered each room and said to them: “Write for me the Torah of Moses your teacher [in Greek].” The Blessed Holy One placed a wise policy in the hearts of each, and they all agreed to one common understanding. Thus they wrote… “God completed [his work] on the sixth day, ceased on the seventh day”…

Further, the textual rule of thumb known as lectio difficilior potior (the more difficult reading is the stronger one) applies here. It is hard to understand why a scribe would have changed an understandable reading “sixth” to a contextually difficult “seventh,” but it is easy to understand a change in the opposite direction, with some scribes (and possibly translators) finding it difficult to imagine God working on the seventh day, even for a moment, and therefore correcting the primary reading to a theologically easier one.[1]

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You can easily see the enormous difference between these two approaches.  While Moody’s view might make you feel spiritually comforted, it has little to offer when it comes to grappling with the oddities of the text.  It is essentially a homily, a devotional piece, not an analysis of the Hebrew.  In fact, the second sentence (claiming God is “outside of time”) is thoroughly Greek philosophy despite its absorption into Christian theology.  One has to wonder how it made its way into “Hebrew roots” thinking.  My book, God, Time, and the Limits of Omniscience, deals with this.

Emanuel Tov, on the other hand, confronts the problem created by varying accounts of this verse, not as a challenge to religion but rather as a way of understanding the human manipulation of the text to fit a theological agenda.

Now you must ask yourself, “Whose approach helps me understand the original intention of the author?”  And if your answer leads you away from the devotional trajectory, you will also have to ask, “How does it make me feel to know that the biblical text isn’t quite as pure as I thought?”  As noted by Jewish scholars:

It is therefore of upmost importance to develop religious approaches that free academic research from external coercion, and, at the same time, free the religious world from its fear of academic research. This development will contribute to the advancement of impartial research, as well as to the formulation of a clear, courageous, unbiased faith. Adherents of this faith will not fear the use of scientific methods, but will adopt them enthusiastically, recognizing that the search for truth is a religious obligation.[3]

Topical Index:  seventh, creation, Emanuel Tov, Valerie Moody, textual criticism, Genesis 2:2

[1] Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Torah: Ten Short Case Studies

[2] Valeria Moody, “Unlocking Time,” published 31 August 2023

[3] “Introduction,” in The Believer and the Modern Study of the Bible (2019), p. ix.