Let the world be recreated!
Gn 1:1-2,4a and the beginning of the
Fonseca district: macro-ecumenical roots
Fabio Py Murta de Almeida
Abstract: This text was originally produced for a religious community. But since in Latin America there is a certain amount of overlapping between practice and theory, it later acquired academic features that were a result of the need to show that the relationship
between the myths of the Creation and the imagery of the inauguration of temples had been forgotten by the Biblical science.
Keywords: Gn 1:1-2,4a – Creation – myths – temple – human beings
I believe it is advisable to return to the part of the reflection made at the end of
January in the Lutheran Parish of Esperança, in Niterói, entitled “How Jesus did it.
The rite of the water: staging the liberation for a better world”. And the reason for
this is that fortunately, we had the opportunity to be before a splendid text, carefully chosen for the opening of the Hebrew Bible, that is, Gn 1:1-2,4a. In agreement with this passage, we should recognize what gives the human being sacred
significance, the element that acts as a bridge between the divine and life and is a
micro-cosmos of the sacred domain: the temple.
The imagery of the temple and the recitation in the Fonseca
District
“Centro do mundo” [...] Estes espaços sagrados também podiam ser construídos. Mas sua construção era, de certa forma, uma cosmogonia, uma criação do mundo. Até ai, nada de anormal,
pois, como vimos, o mundo foi criado a partir de um embrião, de um “centro”. Assim, por exemplo, a construção do altar védico do fogo reproduziu a criação do mundo, e o altar era em si um
microcosmo, um imago mundi.
(“Centre of the world” […] These sacred spaces could also be built. But their construction was,
to a certain extent, a cosmogony, a creation of the world. To this point nothing very extraordinary
since, as we have seen, the world was created from an embryo, from a “centre”. Thus, for example, the building of the Vedic altar of fire reproduced the creation of the world and the altar itself
was a micro-cosmos, an imago mundi.)
MSc. in the Sciences of Religion by the Methodist University of São Paulo. Professor at the Theological
Baptist Seminar in the South of Brazil and in Theology at a Distance at the Institute A Vez do Mestre in the
Cândido Mendes University. E-mail: [email protected].
For the opening of the Hebrew Bible, see: WESTERMANN, Claus. Gn 1:11. A Commentary. pp. 32-56
ELIADE, Mircea. Imagens e símbolos. pp.45-53.
Id.ibid. p. 48.
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At the time of the foundation of the Fonseca district (in Niterói: Rio de Janeiro)
in order to help a certain group to establish itself in the region, the Christian church
decided to settle on a hill in order to provide water to a population that had only
the minimum necessary for survival.
This happened because the members of that temporary group of dwellings realized that by this means they could solve the problem of water shortage – an essential human need. The water brought with the establishment of the church would
help the community to settle down and would give its dwellers better standards of
living. The fact that the there were job opportunities in the neighbourhood for the
most representative leaders of the community– making transport between home
and work easier for those who managed to get those jobs – was one of the reasons
for this.
A Christening in the water, then, would have been the symbolical mark of the
beginning of this community. For the community had in the water the key for the
humanization of their lives and for a possible way out of the exploitation that had
been the daily fate of its members. Then we went on to identify the elements used
by the leaders of the church to explain the faith to the dwellers trying to live in that
community.
Well, for the Christening a specific rite was created. This included a special song
that would remind everyone of that day. After all, that was a very special day! In
the song were included the elements of the Christian faith and more than this, the
importance of the temple in the community.
At the temple, we sing precisely everything that exists in it. The song justifies the
people’s faith, displayed inside the temple. Thus we sung the signs of the Christening in the temple: the candles, showing Christ’s sacrifice; the water, used to baptize,
made reference to the primary waters of the Christian faith; and the value of the
cross was recognized in the centre of the temple. Finally the rite shares the symbolical value of each element in the sacred space.
A song, just a few words, and it was possible to recognize the essential element
for the faith now located on the hill. In consequence, these elements reflect themselves now on the micro-cosmos of this faith, the Christian temple. And in such a
valuable song that related the elements of the faith displayed at the temple (in the
blossoming of that micro-Christianity) the detail of co-existence was not missing.
And this is so because after all that song and rite, it became clear that life continued and that everyone, independently of their faith or creed, should co-exist and
have solidarity. For those Christian leaders, the temple was the incentive to religios
It is worth remembering Jean Pierre Vernant’s notion (Mito e o pensamento entre os gregos pp. 293-319)
when he analyses the public elements of Greek life. In his view rite and myth have relevant marks for the
civilizational process of a society.
See DUMEZIL, James. Do mito ao romance. PP. 108-132.
In sum, the objective of this article is to make clear that particularly in the meetings that lead to the
foundation of temples and cosmogonies, “the exteriority of the sacred and its concreteness such as the built
structure of the Temple”, makes possible the perception of the manifestation of the sacred within a religion.
Cf. GIL FILHO, Sylvio Fausto. O sagrado e a religião. P14. Also ROSENDAHL, Zeny. Geografia e religião:
uma proposta. PP.45-74.
In this case it is worth mentioning that the inauguration of the temple appears to have marks and conceptions
close to those of the tragedy for the Greek world. In the case of the themes of the Greek tragedies and the
actual tragedies, they are analysed having in mind their staging of the social practices: the justification of
the noblemen’s lineages (in Judah: sacerdotal), the level of representation of the world in them and the
conception of how each structuring element melds with the social life. For a better understanding of this
notion, cf: VERNANT, Jean Pierre. Mito e tragédia na Grécia antiga. pp. 14-19.
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48
ity but not to fundamentalism. We sought life and in it, the religious men of every
creed had to coexist. The objective of the liturgical meeting at the temple was to
identify and to revive the dynamics of the community members’ faith, giving them
the strength necessary for the days to come.
The imagery of the temple and the recitation in Palestine at the
time of the Persians.
GN 1:1-2,4a reminds us of this narrative. Its ritual must have been carried out
near the time of the foundation of the Temple of Jerusalem, at the time of the Persians. A ritual executed by the people that dispersed (or went as exiles) to Babylon,
and a large number of whom returned from there as artificers (priests). Having received King Cyrus’ pardon they arrived with the assignment to build a temple in
Judah.10
They came back because they needed to rebuild the temple – destroyed earlier
by the Babylonian invaders - for Jehovah. Once more they sang the Divine’s name
near the dwellings that had been devastated and destroyed by the invaders. Then, in
Gn 1:1-2,4a we have a text of consecration, a text that indicates the location of the
temple (that was being inaugurated) for the recitation to Jehovah.
The song must be staged in order to show the orchestration of the world and the
physical organization of the temple.11 Therefore, from Gn 1:3 onwards, every time
the expression “God said” appears, the elements of the temple and what it meant
within the creation of the Jewish world are shown. How perfect this is! Only God
could permit this combination of the staging in the middle of the temple and the
melody that gave the rite a dramatic tone. Thus the orchestration of the temple with
the primary organization of the world12 - as it happened in the Fonseca hill in Niterói.
As the days were being chanted – the first, the second, the third […] and the
seventh – the form of the temple and the elements that acted as symbols within it
should be shown. Thus the orchestration at the beginning of Genesis was built, allying rite with song, song with writings and Holy Writings with the foundation of
We agree with Mircea Eliade’s proposition whereby he suggests that every cosmogony (such as Gn 1:1-2
4ª) serves originally for the opening of temples. See Imagens e símbolos, pp. 43-59. In the Biblical science,
Oswaldo Ribeiro deals with the Genesis texts about the creation and the deluge relating them with Mircea
Eliade’s proposal about the sciences of religion. See RIBEIRO, Osvaldo Luiz. A terra e as águas originais.
História e linguagem mítica em Gn 1,1-3, pp. 40-48. In Latin America he is the one to consider that this
poetry was a song in the Temple of Jerusalem at the Persian age. In the critique of the German Bible,
however, having in hand the relevant literary elements, Luperdt Schmidt, before Osvaldo Ribeiro, had raised
the possibility that this text belonged to that historical moment. Cf. Studien zur Priestershrift pp. 257-268.
Anyway, in this article we notice that the pericope of Gn 1:1-2,4a was staged in view of the arrival of the
exiled Jews in Palestine, at the time of the Persians. And the creation of this text must have occurred after
the Babylonian exile that for some interpretations, in the Latin American context, would be the stage for its
formation. See, for instance, Milton Schwantes’ text Projetos de esperança, pp. 54-68.
10 Cf. DONNER, Herbert. História de Israel e dos povos vizinhos. pp. 345-391.
11 Once more Osvaldo Luiz Ribeiro is the author who deals with this proposal of the opening of the Temple in
Jerusalém and the appearance of the cosmogony, “A terra e as águas originais, história e linguagem mítica
em Gn 1,1-3”, cit., pp. 40-48. Now, in order to explore further the architectural data of Osvaldo Ribeiro’s
hypothesis, in this article we start to deal with what will be more deeply developed later, the detail of
characterizing the temple as a sacred place. The temple is recognized as a symbol that influences and is
influenced by the rite that created the myth and the religious symbolic geography of the Persian age. To find
out more about the role of the rite and the myth in the geography of the sacred, see: ROSENDAHL, Zeny.
Geografia e religião: uma proposta, cit., pp. 63-74.
12 Cf. ELIADE, Mircea. Imagens e símbolos, cit., pp. 43-59.
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the world.13 Therefore this liturgical poem was carefully chosen to be the beginning
of the Bible. Its orchestration is perfect! For, more than anything else, it is a public
demonstration of how Jehovah created the Jewish world and also how he adjusted
it by interweaving the elements that made up the cult and the Temple of Jerusalem
with the associations of the illud tempus.14
Macro-ecumenical roots as the key for these narratives: the
conclusion.
We see this in the Niterói community when, although they sing life according to
their Christian faith, they also get on with life coexisting with all others. They do not
define themselves as different in virtue of their faith for, deep down, all religions,
even in their most distant forms, seek God.
We can see something similar occurring when we examine the first sentence of
the hymn in honour of the foundation of the Jewish world. If we read in the Hebrew
text the first sentence in Genesis (1:1a) we have: “In a beginning God created the
heaven and the earth” instead of, (in João Ferreira de Almeida’s translation) “In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth”.15 In the same way, in the most
important and incisive texts of the Jewish-Christian tradition we are called to go to
the world, not to close our doors to it.
All this without rejecting the belief that we are different, or better, or even worse
than somebody else. For if this translation is consonant with the Hebrew text, our
creation, like any other, is a mere individual one, sectarian by definition and not
universal. We have only “a creation” and not “the creation”. Consequently we have
just “a beginning” not “the beginning” of all things.
Thus, let us make life in the celebrations in our own way, but let us be sure that
these celebrations must give us courage every week to confront the challenge at
our door: the days to come. Like both communities dealt with in this text, in our
day to day let us have the wisdom to look straight at life and at people with all their
differences.
Also let us be sure that God allows each of us to live and sing in a very happy
way our sayings, our certainties and our faiths. And may God create in us, every
single day, a respectful heart able to accept everyone with open arms. This is not
just a wish of certain Christian groups but the social condition in which he created
the narratives of the Jewish creation.
May he allow us to experience his justice and his respect every day. God and
Jesus with us in this, Amen!
Bibliography
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Sinodal-Vozes, 2001.
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ELIADE, Mircea. Imagens e símbolos. Ensaios sobre o simbolismo mágico-religioso. São
Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2002. 178p.
13 VERNANT, Jean Pierre. Mito e tragédia na Grécia antiga, cit., pp. 14-19.
14 Cf. ROSENDAHL, Zeny. Geografia e religião: uma proposta, cit., pp. 63-74.
15 Besides the Hebrew-Portuguese dictionaries found in the market, by translating this Harold Reimer helped
us to understand the ecumenical sphere of Gn 1:1-2,4ª : “In a beginning... About the mythical language in
Gn 1:1-2,4a”,pp. 743-764.
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