"Stars of Heaven"

 

    Much of Genesis details the building of God's people, starting explicitly for the first time when God says unto Abram to "look now toward the heaven, and tell the stars, and if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall your seed be" (Genesis 15:5). This makes it known early on that Abram is to be God's chosen one, and his descendants will be a special people in the eyes of God. Later in Genesis, God goes onto to explicitly tell Abraham, now renamed, that he shall give the entire land of Canaan unto Abraham and his descendants, and God even makes a covenant with him and his seed forever, marked by circumcision of the foreskin (Genesis 17:8-11).  God continues this relationship with Abraham's descendants by taking great interest in the lives of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph after him, all of whom would go onto to play integral roles in the ultimate creation of Israel, both the nation and the children of Jacob, who himself would be later renamed Israel. Specifically, Isaac is given such special abilities as to bless his son, Jacob whom he believed Esau at the time, in old age with the favor and fortune of the Lord, lordship over his brethren, and blessings and curses to his allies and enemies respectively. Jacob is later given prophetic dreams by God Himself, seeing a "ladder" to Heaven in what he would call Bethel, "the house of God" and "gate of Heaven" (Genesis 28:12-17). Jacob would go on to acquire an entourage of wives, children, and livestock from Laban, the very entourage which would form the beginnings of Israel, and he was even blessed enough to wrestle with God Himself who renames him "Israel" (Genesis 32:24-30). Eventually, after Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers and ends up in Egypt, we learn that Joseph has the gift of prophetic dreams which he uses first to predict the very different fates of two servants of the Pharaoh, the baker and the butler, before he predicts the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine that would befall Egypt from the Pharaoh's dreams. Interpreting the Pharaoh's dreams so masterfully, Joseph becomes the second most powerful man in Egypt with plentiful grain at his disposal during the worldwide famine that would allow Joseph to reunite with his brothers as they search for food in Egypt. In the end, Josephs helps the people of Israel find favor in the eyes of the Pharaoh and the Egyptians and brings them into Egypt as one whole group, marking the first time we see the people of Israel as one distinct entity.

    All of this summary is to say that Genesis is fundamentally the origin story for the nation of Israel. While it begins with stories such as the seven days of creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, the Flood and Noah's Ark, the important part of Genesis comes along with Abraham and his descendants. Keeping this in mind, I would like to reflect on the above photo of the Carina Nebula, a cloud of gas and dust that acts as a stellar nursery for the universe's new stars. This photo by JWST is undeniably beautiful, and I think it mirrors Genesis pretty well. Obviously, the Big Bang, the most popular purely scientific theory for the creation of everything, was very important because it allowed for matter and energy to exist in the first place, but for many thousands of years after the Big Bang, there was no real substance to anything. Specifically, it took a very long time for electrons to anchor themselves to protons, before which there were not only no atoms, buy no light in the sense that would allow us to see anything. This is because the entire universe was taken up by a cloud of charged particles that did not allow light to travel in a straight line for very long before it interacted with something and changed its path. Everything was hazy at best, and the universe's beauty was hidden. This parallels Genesis where the stories of creation, Adam, Eve, and Noah are important for describing how Abram found himself in the world he was in, but the interesting part comes with the description of how God's people, Judaism, and Israel came about after that. Likewise, the Carina Nebula's beauty only comes after the Big Bang and the binding of electrons to protons, and much of the universe's miracles can only be found in the matter (stars, atoms, molecules, plasma, etc.) and light that are abundant in the Carina Nebula. Considering this, God's promise to Abraham for descendants as numerous as the "stars of heaven" takes on new meaning as it is both the children of Abraham and the stars that make the Bible and Carina Nebula, respectively, fascinating (Genesis 26:4).

    On this note, while slightly unrelated, I found it interesting how the film Noah by Darren Aronofsky depicts the relationship between scientific theories of creation and the seven days of creation in the Bible. The interpretation of Noah still covers the happenings of each of the seven days, but it puts said happenings within the context of the Big Bang as well as the formation of our sun, the solar system, the Earth, and the Moon. Eventually life itself begins to form and evolve on Earth; even apes are the result of evolution, and their advancement to the status of human seems to be a divine intervention more so than a crafting of Man from dust. This interpretation too seems to indicate that the interesting part of creation is in the later parts, those focused on the Earth and surrounding solar system rather than the formation of the universe beforehand that took longer because the important part is what happens on this planet. Again, the Bible follows the beginnings of a religion and of a religious people. While it does explain such topics as creation and why the Earth exists as it does, those are secondary to the stories of God's people.